Glass 
Book 



THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 



THE 



LIGHT OF THE WORLD 



ana €)tUer ^etmonjs 



BT THE 

Rt. Rev. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. 



Fifth Series 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DCJTTON AND COMPANY 
31 West Twenty-Third Street 
1902 



Copyright, 1890, 

Br E. P. DUTTON ASD Ctf 



Ube "Knickerbocker press, IRew JSorfc 



TO 

Efte Jttemots of mg Brother, 

GEORGE BROOKS, 

WHO DIED IN THE GREAT WAR 
I DEDICATE THESE SERMONS. 



CONTENTS. 



Sermon Page 

T. The Light of the World l 

II. The New and Greater Miracle 24 

III. The Priority of God 40 

IV. Identity and Variety 57 

V. The Seriousness of Life 73 

VI. The Choice Young Man 89 

VII. Backgrounds and Foregrounds 106 

VIII. The Silence of Christ 124 

IX. How to Abound 140 

X. How to be Abased 159 

XL The Christian Church 177 

XII. The Opening of the Eyes 194 

XIII. The Beloved Physician 216 

XIV. Deep Calling unto Deep 234 

XV. The Wings of the Seraphim 253 

XVI. The Planter and the Rain 270 

XVII. New Experiences 287 

&VIII. The Perfect Faith 306 

XIX. The Joy with God 324 

XX. The Illumination of Obedience 340 

XXI. The Certain End 359 



SERMONS 



i. 



THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the Light of the 
World : he that followeth me shall not walk in Darkness, but shall have 
the Light of Life. — John viii. 12. 

Sometimes J esus gathers His work and nature up in 
one descriptive word, and offers it, as it were out of 
wide-open hand, complete to His disciples. In such a 
word all the details of His relation to the soul and to 
the world are comprehensively included. As the dis- 
ciple listens and receives it, he feels all his fragmentary 
and scattered experiences drawing together and round- 
ing into unity. As, having heard it, he carries it forth 
with him into his life, he finds all future experiences 
claiming their places within it, and getting their mean- 
ing from it. Such words of Jesus are like spheres of 
crystal into which the world is gathered, and where the 
past and future, the small and great, may all be read. 

It seems to me as if there were days on which we 
wanted to set one of these comprehensive words of 
Christ before our eyes and study it. There are days 
when we must give ourselves to some particular detail 

l 



2 



The Light of the World. 



of Christian truth or conduct. There are other days 
when we are faced by the question of the whole meaning 
of the Christian faith and its relation to the great world 
of life. Yague and perplexed the soul is to which its 
faith does not come with distinct and special touches, 
pressing directly on every movement of its life. But 
poor and petty is the soul which has no large conception 
of its faith, always abiding around and enfolding its de- 
tails and giving them the dignity and unity they need. 

One of these comprehensive words of Jesus is our text 
this morning. 

I want to ask you then to think with me what Jesus 
means when He declares Himself to be the " Light of the 
World " or the " Light of Life. " The words come down 
to us out of the old Hebrew temple where He spoke 
them first. They pierce into the centre of our mod- 
ern life. Nay, they have done much to make our mod- 
ern life, and to make it different from the old Hebrew 
temple where they were spoken first. It will be good 
indeed if we can feel something of the power that is 
in them, and understand how clear is the conception of 
Life which they include, how far our present Christian- 
ity is an embodiment of that conception, how far it fails 
of it, how certain it is in being ever truer and truer 
to that conception that the faith of Christ must come 
to be the Master of the soul and of the world. 

We may begin, then, by considering what would be 
the idea of Christ and His relation to the world which 
we should get if this were all we knew of Him, — if He 
as yet had told us nothing of Himself but what is 
wrapped up in these rich and simple words, "I am 



The Light of the World. 



3 



the Light of the World," "I am the Light of Life." 
They send us instantly abroad into the world of Nature. 
They set us on the hill-top watching the sunrise as it 
fills the east with glory. They show us the great plain 
flooded and beaten and quivering with the noon-day 
sun. They hush and elevate us with the mystery and 
sweetness and suggestiveness of the evening's glow. 
There could be no image so abundant in its meaning ; no 
fact plucked from the world of Nature could have such 
vast variety of truth to tell ; and yet one meaning shines 
out from the depth of the figure and irradiates all its 
messages. They all are true by its truth. What is that 
meaning ? It is the essential richness and possibility 
of the world and its essential belonging to the sun. 
Light may be great and glorious in itself. The sun 
may be tumultuous with fiery splendor ; the atmosphere 
may roll in billows of glory for its million miles ; but 
light as related to earth has its significance in the 
earth's possibilities. The sun, as the world's sun, is 
nothing without the world, on which it shines, and 
whose essential character and glory it displays. 

Do you see what I mean ? When the sun rose this 
morning it found the world here. It did not make the 
world. It did not fling forth on its earliest ray this 
solid globe, which was not and would not have been but 
*or the sun's rising. What did it do ? It found the 
world in darkness, torpid and heavy and asleep ; with 
powers all wrapped up in sluggishness ; with life that 
was hardly better or more alive than death. The sun 
found this great sleeping world and woke it. It bade 
it be itself. It quickened every slow and sluggish fac- 



4 



The Light of the World. 



ulty. It called to the dull streams, and said, "Be 
quick ; " to the dull birds and bade them sing ; to the 
dull fields and made them grow ; to the dull men and 
bade them talk and think and work. It flashed electric 
invitation to the whole mass of sleeping power which 
really was the world, and summoned it to action. It 
did not make the world. It did not sweep a dead world 
off and set a live world in its place. It did not start 
another set of processes unlike those which had been 
sluggishly moving in the darkness It poured strength 
into the essential processes which belonged to the very 
nature of the earth which it illuminated. It glorified, 
intensified, fulfilled the earth; so that with the sun's 
work incomplete, with part of the earth illuminated and 
the rest lying in the darkness still, we can most easily 
conceive of the dark region looking in its half-life drow- 
sily over to the region which was flooded with light, and 
saying, " There, there is the true earth ! That is the real 
planet. In light and not in darkness the earth truly 
is itself." 

That is the Parable of the Light. And now it seems, 
to me to be of all importance to remember and assert 
all that to be distinctly a true parable of Christ. He 
says it is : "I am the Light of the World. " A thousand 
things that means. A thousand subtle, mystic mira- 
cles of deep and intricate relationship between Christ 
and humanity must be enfolded in those words; but 
over and behind and within all other meanings, it means 
this, — the essential richness and possibility of human- 
ity and its essential belonging to Divinity. Christ is 
unspeakably great and glorious in Himself. The glory 



The Light of the World. 



5 



which He had with His Father " before the world was, " 
of that we can only meditate and wonder ; but the glory 
which He has had since the world was, the glory 
which He has had in relation to the world, is all 
bound up with the world's possibilities, has all con- 
sisted in the utterance and revelation and fulfilment of 
capacities which were in the very nature of the world 
on which His Light has shone. 

Do you see what I mean ? Christ rises on a soul. 
Christ rises on the world. I speak in crude and super- 
ficial language. For the moment I make no account of 
the deep and sacred truth, — the truth which alone is 
finally and absolutely true, — that Christ has always 
been with every soul and all the world. I talk in crude 
and superficial words, and say Christ comes to any soul 
or to the world. What is it that happens ? If the fig- 
ure of the Light is true, Christ when He comes finds 
the soul or the world really existent, really having 
within itself its holiest capabilities, really moving, 
though dimly and darkly, in spite of all its hindrances, 
in its true directions; and what He does for it is to 
quicken it through and through, to sound the bugle of 
its true life in its ears, to make it feel the nobleness of 
movements which have seemed to it ignoble, the hope- 
fulness of impulses which have seemed hopeless, to bid 
it be itself. The little lives which do in little ways 
that which the life of J esus does completely, the noble 
characters of which we think we have the right to say 
that they are the lights of human history, this is true 
also of them. They reveal and they inspire. The 
worthless becomes full of worth, the insignificant be- 



6 The Light of the World. 

comes full of meaning at their touch. They faintly 
catch the feeble reflection of His life who is the true 
Light of the World, the real illumination and inspira- 
tion of humanity. 

But metaphors bewilder and embarrass us when once 
we have caught their general meaning, and they begin 
to tempt us to follow them out into details into which 
they were not meant to lead us. Let us then leave the 
figure, and try to grasp the truth in its complete sim- 
plicity and see what some of its applications are. The 
truth is that every higher life to which man comes, and 
especially the highest life in Christ, is in the true line 
of man's humanity; there is no transportation to a for- 
eign region. There is the quickening and fulfilling of 
what man by the very essence of his nature is. The 
more man becomes irradiated with Divinity, the more, 
not the less, truly he is man. The fullest Christian ex- 
perience is simply the fullest life. To enter into it 
therefore is no wise strange. The wonder and the un- 
naturalness is that any child of God should live outside 
of it, and so in all his life should never be himself. 

When I repeat such truths they seem self-evident. 
No man, I think, denies them ; and yet I feel the absence 
of their power all through men's struggles for the Chris- 
tian life. A sense of foreignness and unnaturalness and 
strangeness lies like a fog across the entrance of the 
divine country ; a certain wonder whether I, a man, have 
any business there ; an unreality about it all ; a break 
and gulf between what the world is and what we know 
it ought to be, — all these are elements in the obscurity, 
the feebleness, the vague remoteness, of religion. 



The Light of the World. 



7 



And vet how clear the Bible is about it all ! How 
clear Christ is ! It is redemption and fulfilment which 
he comes to bring to man. Those are his words. There 
is a true humanity which is to be restored, and all whose 
unattained possibilities are to be filled out. There is no 
human affection, of fatherhood, brotherhood, child- 
hood, which is not capable of expressing divine rela- 
tions. Man is a child of God, for whom his Father's 
house is waiting. The whole creation is groaning and 
travailing till man shall be complete. Christ comes 
not to destroy but to fulfil. What is the spirit of such 
words as those ? Is it not all a claiming of man through 
all his life for God ? Is it not an assertion that just so 
far as he is not God's he is not truly man ? Is it not a 
declaration that whatever he does in his true human 
nature, undistorted, unperverted, is divinely done, and 
therefore that the divine perfection of his life will be 
in the direction which these efforts of his nature indi- 
cate and prophesy ? 

I bid you to think whether to clearly believe this 
would not make the world more full of courage and of 
hope. If you could thoroughly believe that the divine 
life to which you were called was the completion, and 
not the abrogation and surrender, of your humanity, 
would you not be more strong and eager in your en- 
trance on it ? If below the superficial currents which 
so tremendously draw us away from righteousness and 
truth we always felt the tug and majestic pressure of 
the profoundest currents setting toward righteousness 
and truth, would not our souls be stronger? Shall we 
not think that? Shall we leave it to doubting lips to 



8 



The Light of the World. 



tell about the " tendency which makes for righteous- 
ness " ? Shall we not tell of it, — we who believe in 
Christ, who made in His very being the declaration of 
the nativeness of righteousness to man, who bade all 
generations see in Him how the Son of Man is the Son 
of God in the foundation and intention of His life ? 

Let us see how all this is true in various applications. 
Apply it first to the standards of character. We talk of 
Christian character as if it were some separate and spe- 
cial thing unattempted, unsuggested by the human soul 
until it became aware of Christ. There would come a 
great flood of light and reality into it all if we knew 
thoroughly that the Christian character is nothing but 
the completed human character. The Christian is noth- 
ing but the true man. Nothing but the true man, d j I 
say ? As if that were a little thing ! As if man, with 
any inflow of divinity, could be, could wish to be any- 
thing more or different from man ! But we imagine a 
certain vague array of qualities which are to belong to 
the Christian life which are not the intrinsic human 
qualities ; and so our Christian type becomes unreal, and 
our human type loses its dignity and greatness. Human 
courage, human patience, human trustiness, human hu- 
mility, — these filled with the fire of God make the graces 
of the Christian life. We are still haunted by the false 
old distinction of the natural virtues and the Christian 
graces. The Christian graces are nothing but the nat- 
ural virtues held up into the light of Christ. They arc 
made of the same stuff ; they are lifted along the same 
lines ; but they have found their pinnacle. They have 
caught the illumination which their souls desire. Man- 



The Light of the World 



9 



liness has not been changed into Godliness; it has 
fulfilled itself in Godliness. 

As soon as we understand all this, then what a great, 
clear thing salvation becomes. Its one idea is health. 
Not rescue from suffering, not plucking out of fire, not 
deportation to some strange, beautiful region where the 
winds blow with other influences and the skies drop with 
other dews, not the enchaining of the spirit with some 
unreal celestial spell, but health, — the cool, calm vigor 
of the normal human life ; the making of the man to be 
himself; the calling up out of the depths of his being 
and the filling with vitality of that self which is truly 
he, — this is salvation ! 

Of course it all assumes that in this mixture of good 
and evil which we call Man, this motley and medley 
which we call human character, it is the good and not 
the evil which is the foundation color of the whole. 
Man is a son of God on whom the Devil has laid his 
hand, not a child of the Devil whom God is trying to 
steal. That is the first truth of all religion. That is 
what Christ is teaching everywhere and always. " We 
called the chess-board white, we call it black ; " but it 
is, this chess-board of our human life, white not black, 

— black spotted on white, not white spotted upon 
black. 

It is easy to make this question of precedence and in 
trusion seem unimportant. " If man stands here to-day 
half bad, half good, what matters it how it came about, 

— whether the good intruded on the bad, or the bad 
upon the good ? Here is the present actual condition. 
Is not that enough ? " No, surely it is not. Everything 



10 



TJie Light of the World. 



depends in the great world upon whether Peace or War 
is the Intruder and the Rebel, upon whether Liberty or 
Slavery is the ideal possessor of the field. Everything 
depends in personal life upon whether Cowardice has 
invaded the rightful realm of Courage, or Courage has 
pitched its white tent on dusky fields which belong to 
Cowardice, or whether Truth or Falsehood is the ulti- 
mate king to whom the realm belongs. The great truth 
of Redemption, the great idea of Salvation, is that the 
realm belongs to Truth, that the Lie is everywhere and 
always an intruder and a foe. He came in, therefore 
he may be driven out. When he is driven out, and 
man is purely man, then man is saved. It is the glory 
and preciousness of the first mysterious, poetic chapters 
of Genesis that they are radiant through all their sad- 
ness with that truth. 

Does this make smaller or less important that great 
Power of God whereby the human life passes from the 
old condition to the new, — the power of conversion? 
Certainly not ! What task could be more worthy of the 
Father's power and love than this assertion and fulfil- 
ment of His child ? All of our Christian thinking and 
talking has been and is haunted by a certain idea of 
failure and recommencement. Man is a failure, so there 
shall be a new attempt; and in place of the man we 
will make the Christian! There is nothing of that 
tone about what Jesus says. The Christian to Jesus is 
the man. The Christian, to all who think the thought of 
Jesus after Him, is the perfected and completed man. 

J ust see what this involves. Hear with what natural- 
ness it clothes the invitations of the Gospel. They are 



The Light of the World. 



11 



not strange summons to some distant, unknown land; 
they are God's call to you to be yourself. They ap- 
peal to a homesickness in your own heart and make it 
their confederate. That you should be the thing you 
have been, and not be that better thing, that new man 
which is the oldest man, the first type and image of your 
being, is unnatural and awful. The world in the new 
light of the Gospel expects it of you, is longing for it. 
The creation, in Saint Paul's great phrase, is groaning 
and travailing, waiting for the manifestation of this 
child of God which is hidden in your life. 

And all this vindicates itself by a mysterious and beau- 
tiful familiarity in the new life when you have begun 
to live it. With confidence I know that I could appeal 
to the experience of many of you who hear me, to rec- 
ognize what I mean. I take a plant whose home is in 
the tropics, but which has grown to stunted life amid 
the granite of Vermont. I carry it and set it where its 
nature essentially belongs. Does it not know the warm 
earth, and does not the warm earth know it ? Do not 
the palm-trees, and the sky which it sees through their 
broad leaves, and the warmer stars which glorify the 
sky at night speak to the amazed but satisfied heart of 
the poor plant in tones which it understands ? And 
when a soul is set there where its nature always has be- 
longed, in the obedience of God, in the dear love of 
Christ, does it not know the new life which embraces 
it ? Ah, it has lived in it always in the idea of its 
being, in the conception of existence which has been 
always at its heart. It has walked the great halls of 
the divine obedience. It has stood by this river of di- 



12 



The Light of the World. 



vine refreshment. It has seen these great prospects of 
the celestial hope. It has climbed to these hill-tops of 
prophetic vision. They are not wholly strange. Noth- 
ing is wholly strange to any man when he becomes it, 
which it has always been in his nature to become. Be- 
cause it has always been in man to become the fulfilled 
man> which is the Christian, therefore for a man to have 
become a Christian is never wholly strange. 

See also here what a true ground there is for the ap- 
peal which you desire to make to other souls. It must 
be from the naturalness of the new life that you call out 
to your brethren. You must claim your brother for 
the holiness to which his nature essentially belongs. 
" Come home ! " " Come home ! " "I have found the 
homestead!" "I have found the Father!" "I have 
found the true manhood ! " " I have found what you and 
I and all men were made to be ! " So the soul out of 
the tropics cries out to its brother souls still lingering 
among the granite hills, and the voice has all the per- 
suasiveness of Nature. The soft southern winds which 
bring it tell the souls to which it comes that it is true. 

There are two sorts of attraction which draw, two 
sorts of fascination which hold, human nature every- 
where, — the attraction of the natural and the attrac- 
tion of the unnatural. The attraction of the natural 
everywhere is healthiest and highest. The attraction 
of the natural is the true attraction of Religion, — most 
of all, the attraction of the Christian Gospel. 

And yet again this makes the higher life intelligible, 
and so makes it real. This alone makes such a thing 
as Christian Manliness conceivable. Christian Unman- 



The Light of the World. 



13 



lmess is what a great many of men's pious, earnest 
struggles have been seeking. If the saint on to all 
eternity is to be the ever-ripening man, never changing 
into any new and unknown thing which he was not be- 
fore, never to all eternity unfolding one capacity which 
was not in the substance of his humanity from its crea- 
tion, then it follows that the most celestial and trans- 
cendent goodnesses must still be one in kind with the 
familiar virtues which sometimes in their crude and 
earthly shapes seem low and commonplace. Courage 
in all the worlds is the same courage. Truth before the 
throne of God is the same thing as when neighbor talks 
with neighbor on the street. Mercy will grow tenderer 
and finer, but will be the old blessed balm of life in the 
fields of eternity that it was in your workshop and your 
home. Unselfishness will expand and richen till it en- 
folds the life like sunshine, but it will be the same self- 
denial, opening into a richer self-indulgence, which it 
was when it first stole in with one thin sunbeam on the 
startled soul. There is no new world of virtues in any 
heaven or in any heavenly experience of life. God is 
good and man is good ; and as man becomes more good, 
he becomes not merely more like God, but more himself. 
As he becomes more godly, he becomes more manly too. 

It is so hard for us to believe in the Mystery of Man. 
" Behold man is this, " we say, shutting down some near 
gate which falls only just beyond, quite in sight of, 
what human nature already has attained. If man would 
go beyond that he must be something else than man. 
And just then something breaks the gate away, and lo, 
far out beyond where we can see stretches the Mystery 



14 



The Light of the World. 



of Man. The beautiful, the awful mystery of man! 
To him, to man, all lower lines have climbed, and hav- 
ing come to him, have found a field where evolution 
may go on forever. 

The mystery of man ! How Christ believed in that ! 
Oh, my dear friends, he who does not believe in that 
cannot enter into the full glory of the Incarnation, can- 
not really believe in Christ. Where the mysterious 
reach of manhood touches the divine, there Christ ap- 
pears. No mere development of human nature outgoing 
any other reach that it has made, yet still not incapable 
of being matched, perhaps of being overcome ; not that, 
not that, — unique and separate forever, — but possible, 
because of this same mystery of man in which the least 
of us has share. To him who knows the hither edges 
of that mystery in his own life, the story of how in, on, 
at its depths it should be able to receive and to contain 
divinity cannot seem incredible ; may I not say, cannot 
seem strange ? 

Men talk about the Christhood, and say, " How strange 
it is ! Strange that Christ should have been, — strange 
that Christ should have suffered for mankind. " I can- 
not see that so we most magnify Him or bring Him 
nearest to us. Once feel the mystery of man and is it 
strange ? Once think it possible that God should fill a 
humanity with Himself, once see humanity capable of 
being filled with God, and can you conceive of His not 
doing it ? Must there not be an Incarnation ? Do you 
not instantly begin to search earth for the holy steps ? 
Once think it possible that Christ can, and are you not 
sure that Christ must give himself for our Redemption ? 



The Light of the World. 



15 



So only, when it seems inevitable and natural, does the 
Christhood become our pattern. Then only does it shine 
on the mountain-top up toward which we can feel the 
low lines of our low life aspiring. The Son of God is 
also the Son of Man. Then in us, the sons of men, 
there is the key to the secret of His being and His work. 
Know Christ that you may know yourself. But, oh ? 
also know yourself that you may know Christ! 

I think to every Christian there come times when all 
the strangeness disappears from the divine humanity 
which stands radiant at the centre of his faith. He 
finds it hard to believe in himself and in his brethren 
perhaps ; but that Christ should be and should be Christ 
appears the one reasonable, natural, certain thing in all 
the universe. In Him all broken lines unite; in Him 
all scattered sounds are gathered into harmony; and 
out of the consummate certainty of Him, the soul 
comes back to find the certainty of common things 
which the lower faith holds, which advancing faith 
loses, and then finds again in Christ. 

How every truth attains to its enlargement and real- 
ity in this great truth, — that the soul of man carries the 
highest possibilities within itself, and that what Christ 
does for it is to kindle and call forth these possibilities 
to actual existence. We do not understand the Church 
until we understand this truth. Seen in its light the 
Christian Church is nothing in the world except the 
promise and prophecy and picture of what the world in 
its idea is and always has been, and in its completion 
must visibly become. It is the primary crystal izati on of 
humanity. It is no favored, elect body caught from the 



16 



The Light of the World. 



ruin, given a salvation in which the rest can have no 
part. It is an attempt to realize the universal possibil- 
ity. All men are its potential members. The strange 
thing for any man is not that he should be within it, 
but that he should be without it. Every good move- 
ment of any most secular sort is a struggle toward it, 
a part of its activity. All the world's history is eccle- 
siastical history, is the story of the success and failure, 
the advance and hindrance of the ideal humanity, the 
Church of the living God. Well may the prophet poet 
greet it, — 

' 1 0 heart of mine, keep patience ; looking forth 
As from the Mount of Vision I behold 
Pure, just, and free the Church of Christ on earth, — 
The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold." 

Tell me, my friends, can we not all think that we see a 
progress and elevation in men's ideas about their souls' 
conversion which would seem to show an entrance into 
the power of this truth ? In old times more than to- 
day he who entered into the new life of Christ thought 
of himself as rescued, snatched from the wreck of a 
ruined and sinking world, given an exceptional privi- 
lege of safety. To-day more than in old times the saved 
soul looks with a delighted and awe-struck wonder into 
his new experience, and sees in it the true and natural 
destiny of all mankind. "Lo, because I am this, I 
know that all men may be it. God has but shown me 
in my soul's experience of what all souls are capable." 
And so the new life does not separate the soul from, 
but brings it more deeply into sympathy with, al] 
humanity. 



The Light of the World. 



17 



I believe that here also is the real truth and the 
final satisfaction of men's minds as concerns the Bible. 
As the spiritual life with which the Bible deals is the 
flower of human life, so the Book which deals with it 
is the flower of human books. But it is not thereby an 
unhuman book. It is the most human of all books. In 
it is seen the everlasting struggle of the man-life to ful- 
fil itself in God. All books in which that universal 
struggle of humanity is told are younger brothers, — less 
clear and realized and developed utterances of that which 
is so vivid in the history of the sacred people and is per- 
fect in the picture of the divine Man. I will not be puz- 
zled, but rejoice when I find in all the sacred books, in all 
deep, serious books of every sort, foregleams and adum- 
brations of the lights and shadows which lie distinct 
upon the Bible page. I will seek and find the assur- 
ance that my Bible is inspired of God not in virtue of 
its distance from, but in virtue of its nearness to, the 
human experience and heart. It is in that experience 
and heart that the real inspiration of God is given, and 
thence it issues into the written book : — 

" Out of the heart of Nature rolled 
The Burdens of the Bible old. 
The Litanies of nations came 
Like the volcano's tongue of flame ; 
Up from the burning core below 
The Canticles of love and woe." 

That book is most inspired which most worthily and 
deeply tells the story of the most inspired life. 

Is there not here the light of every darkness and the 
key to eyery riddle ? The missionary goes into a hea- 

2 



18 The Light of the World. 

then land. What shall he make of what he finds there ? 
Shall he not see in it all the raw material and the sug- 
gested potency of that divine life which he knows that 
it is the rightful condition of the Sons of God to live ? 
Shall he not be eager and ingenious, rather than reluc- 
tant, to find and recognize and proclaim the truth that 
the Father has left Himself without witness in no home 
where His children live ? As in the crudest social ways 
and habits of the savage islanders he sees the begin- 
nings and first efforts toward the most perfect and elab- 
orate civilizations which the world contains, — the germs 
of constitutions, the promise of senates and cabinets 
and treaties, — so in the ignorant and half -brutal faiths 
shall he not discover the upward movement of the soul 
to which he shall then delight to offer all the rich light 
of the teaching which has come to his centuries of 
Christian faith, saying, "Lo, this is what it means: 
Whom you are ignorantly worshipping, Him declare I 
unto you " ? 

Among all the philosophies of history where is there 
one that matches with this simple story that man is the 
child of God, forever drawn to his Father, beaten back 
from Him by base waves of passion, sure to come to Him 
in the end. There is no philosophy of history which 
ever has been written like the Parable of the Prodigal 
Son. The first idea, the wanton wandering, the discon- 
tent, the brave return, the cordial welcome, — all are 
there. It is the history of man's action and man's 
thought; it is the story of his institutions and of his 
ideas; it holds the explanation of the past and the 
promise of the future ; its beginning is where the first 



The light of the World. 



19 



conception of what man shall be lies in the heart of the 
Creative Power ; its end is in that endless life which 
man, having been reconciled to God and come to the 
completion of his idea, is to live in his Father's house 
forever. 

Do we ask ourselves, as well we may, at what point 
in that long history the world is standing in this rich 
and interesting period in which we live ? Who shall 
precisely say ? But in the wonderful story of the Prodi- 
gal Son must there not have been one moment when at 
the very height of the revel there came a taste of bit- 
terness into the wine, and when the faces of the harlots, 
in some gleam of fresh morning sunlight which broke 
into the hot and glaring chamber, seemed tawdry and 
false and cruel ? Must there not have been a moment 
somewhere then, perhaps just when the carouse seemed 
most tempestuous and hopeless, a moment when the 
heart of the exile turned to his home, and the life with 
his father seemed so strong and simple and natural and 
real, so cool and sweet and true and healthy, that the 
miserable tumult and the gaudy glare about him for a 
moment became unreal and lost its hold ? Much, much 
had yet to come, — the poverty and swine and husks, — 
before the boy gathered himself together and arose and 
said, " I will go to my father ; " but the tide was turned, 
the face was set homeward, after that one moment of 
true sight of the true light in the hall of unnatural 
revel and resplendent sin. I sometimes think that 
there, in many ways just there, is where our age is 
standing with its startled and bewildered face. 

I may be wrong or right about our age, I may be 



20 



The Light of the World. 



wrong or right about many of the ways in which it has 
appeared to me as if the truth which I have tried to 
preach to you to-day touches the great problems of re- 
ligion and of life. But now I turn to you, young men 
and women, earnest and brave and hopeful — many of 
you also sorely perplexed and puzzled. What does this 
truth mean for you ? Does it not mean everything for 
you if Truth and Courage and Unselfishness and Good- 
ness are indeed natural to man and all Evil is unnatu- 
ral and foreign ? 

There is indeed a superficial and a deeper nature. 
I am talking of the deeper nature. I am talking of the 
nature which belongs to every one of us as the child of 
God. I am talking, not of the waves which may be 
blown this way or that way upon the surface, but of the 
great tide which is heaving shoreward down below. 

The man who lives in that deeper nature, the man 
who believes himself the Son of God, is not surprised 
at his best moments and his noblest inspirations. He 
is not amazed when he does a brave thing or an unself- 
ish thing. He is amazed at himself when he is a 
coward or a liar. He accepts self-restraint only as a 
temporary condition, an immediate necessity of life. 
Not self-restraint but self-indulgence, the free, unhin- 
dered utterance of the deepest nature, which is good, — 
that is the only final picture of man's duty which he 
tolerates. And all the life is one; the specially and 
specifically religious being but the point at which the 
diamond for the moment shines, with all the diamond 
nature waiting in reserve through the whole substance 
of the precious stone. 



The Light of the World. 



21 



Great is the power of a life which knows that its 
highest experiences are its truest experiences, that it is 
most itself when it is at its best. For it each high 
achievement, each splendid vision, is a sign and token 
of the whole nature's possibility. What a piece of the 
man was for that shining instant, it is the duty of the 
whole man to be always. When the hand has once 
touched the rock the heart cannot be satisfied until the 
whole frame has been drawn up out of the waves and 
stands firm on its two feet on the solid stone. 

Are there not very many of us to whom the worst that 
we have been seems ever possible of repetition ; but the 
best that we have ever been shines a strange and splen- 
did miracle which cannot be repeated ? The gutter in 
which we lay one day is always claiming us. The 
mountain-top on which we stood one glorious morning 
seems to have vanished from the earth. 

The very opposite of all that is the belief of him who 
knows himself the child of God. For him, for him 
alone, sin has its true horror. u What! have I, who 
once have claimed God, whom once God has claimed, 
have I been down into the den of Devils ? Have I bru- 
talized my brain with drink ? Have I let my heart 
burn with lust ? Have I, the child of God, cheated and 
lied and been cruel and trodden on my brethren to sat- 
isfy my base ambition ? " Oh, believe me, believe me, 
my dear friends, you never will know the horror and 
misery of sin till you know the glory and mystery of 
man. You never can estimate the disaster of an inter- 
ruption till you know the worth of what it interrupts. 
You never will understand wickedness by dwelling on 



22 



The Light of the World. 



the innate depravity of man. You can understand 
wickedness only by knowing that the very word man 
means holiness and strength. 

Here, too, lies the sublime and beautiful variety of hu- 
man life. It is as beings come to their reality that they 
assert their individuality. In the gutter all the poor 
wretches lie huddled together, one indistinguishable 
mass of woe ; but on the mountain-top each figure stands 
out separate and clear against the blueness of the sky. 
The intense variety of Light ! The awful monotony of 
Darkness ! Men are various ; Christians ought to be va- 
rious a thousand-fold. Strive for your best, that there 
you may find your most distinctive life. We cannot 
dream of what interest the world will have when every 
being in its human multitude shall shine with his own 
light and color, and be the child of God which it is 
possible for him to be, — which he has ever been in the 
true home -land of his Father's thought. 

Do I talk fancies ? Do I paint visions upon unsubstan- 
tial clouds ? If it seem to you that I do, I beg you to 
come back now, as I close, to those words which I quoted 
to you at the beginning. " I am the Light of the World, " 
said Jesus. Do you not see now what I meant when I 
declared that it was in making the world know itself 
that Christ was primarily the Power of the World's Re 
demption ? The Revealer and the Redeemer are not two 
persons, but only one, — one Saviour. 

What then ? If Christ can make you know yourself ; 
if as you walk with Him day by day, He can reveal to you 
your sonship to the Father ; if, keeping daily company 
with Him, you can come more and more to know how 



The Light of the World. 



23 



native is goodness and how unnatural sin is to the soul 
of man; if, dwelling with Him who is both God and 
Man, you can come to believe both in God and in Man 
through Him, then you are saved, — saved from con- 
tempt, saved from despair, saved into courage and hope 
and charity and the power to resist temptation, and the 
passionate pursuit of perfectness. 

It is as simple and as clear as that. Our religion is 
not a system of ideas about Christ. It is Christ. To 
believe in Him is what ? To say a creed ? To join a 
church ? No ; but to have a great, strong, divine Master, 
whom we perfectly love, whom we perfectly trust, whom 
we will follow anywhere, and who, as we follow Him 
or walk by His side, is always drawing out in us our 
true nature and making us determined to be true to it 
through everything, is always compelling us to see 
through falsehood and find the deepest truth, which is, 
in one great utterance of it, that we are the sons of God, 
who is thus always " leading us to the Father. " 

The hope of the world is in the ever richer natural- 
ness of the highest life. " The earth shall be full of the 
knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. " 

Your hope and mine is the same. The day of our 
salvation has not come till every voice brings us one 
message ; till Christ, the Light of the world, everywhere 
reveals to us the divine secret of our life; till every- 
thing without joins with the consciousness all alive 
within, and " the Spirit Itself beareth witness with our 
spirits that we are the children of God. " 



II. 



THE NEW AND GREATER MIRACLE. 

Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused 
that even this man should not have died ? — John xi. 37. 

It is interesting to remember how all which has hap- 
pened to Christianity happened first to Christ. All the 
welcome and rejection, all the eager love, the passion- 
ate hatred, and the perplexed questionings which have 
greeted the religion of the Saviour greeted the Saviour 
first, and have left their record on the pages of the Gos- 
pels, in which the story of His earthly life is told. If 
men have always wondered whether the final salvation 
of this world has been attained in J esus, has there not 
been in their questioning the echo of John the Baptist's 
message, "Art thou He that should come, or do we 
look for another ? " If men have taunted Christianity 
because with all its vast claims to mastery it still has 
been despised and trodden under foot of men, we can 
hear through their mockery the words which greeted 
Jesus in his agony, " If thou be the Son of God, come 
down from the cross." If men's pride in their own 
self-sufficiency and in the competence of their earthly 
associations and traditions has been wounded, they have 
cried out to the Redeemer, who offered His redemption 
with such importunate insistence, "Art thou greater 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



25 



than our father Abraham ? Art thou greater than our 
fathei Jacob, which gave us this well ? " If the spirit- 
ual region from which Christianity issued has seemed 
too obscure, too remote from the great accredited inter- 
ests of mankind, the voice which declared that such a re- 
ligion could not save the world has only taken up again 
the old objections, " Can any good thing come out of 
Nazareth ? " " Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth 
no prophet. " It is a sign of the vitality and reality of 
Jesus, it is a sign of how Christianity is but the ex- 
tension and perpetuation of Christ in the world, that 
all which is said of Christianity to-day was said years 
and years ago of Christ. 

An illustration of all this is found in the words which 
I have chosen for my text. A miracle of Jesus was 
fresh in people's minds. He had touched a blind man's 
eyes and given him his sight. Then some short time 
had passed, and a new need for help had come. Lazarus 
of Bethany was very sick. And Jesus had not healed 
him. He had not even come to him. He had let Laza- 
rus die. And to the people, as they stood around the 
tomb where he was buried, there had inevitably come 
this question, " What does it mean ? Why was there 
not another miracle ? Surely it is strange that He who 
could restore the power of sight should have found any 
difficulty here. Could not this man, which opened the 
eyes of the blind, have caused that this man should not 
have died ? " Mary and Martha, the dead man's sisters, 
felt the same wonder. " Lord, if thou hadst been here 
my brother had not died ! " so each of them exclaimed 
as she came into the Master's presence. It was evi- 



26 



The Nevj and Greater Miracle. 



dently the feeling of the whole scene, — this wonder 
at the unrepeated miracle, at the unused power which 
might have prevented all this sorrow and kept the dear 
life alive. 

And we can imagine something of the questions which 
such a wonder must have started in the people's minds. 
Some of them must have found themselves questioning 
the reality of the old miracle. " Did He indeed then 
open the blind man's eyes ? Could we have been mis- 
taken ? " To others it must have seemed as if J esus 
could not have cared for Lazarus. " It must have been, 
if He had cared for him, that He would have helped him 
here. " And then there must have been others to whom 
there came some better light. "Perhaps after all to 
have caused that this man should not have died would 
not have been the greatest mercy. Perhaps J esus did 
love Lazarus and could have saved him, and did not 
choose to. Perhaps not the repetition of a former mercy 
but something new and different was best." At any 
rate the power and the love of J esus were to them be- 
yond all question ; and so they waited. 

Between these last and the other two groups there 
evidently is a clear distinction. These last believe in 
Jesus; to the others Jesus is still on test and trial. 
Here is the parting of the ways. Here is where some 
turn this way and some that, and some stand hesitating 
at the fork. Here is where men either go up to great- 
ness and full faith, or rest in parti alness and scepti- 
cism which yet often calls itself faith. Oh, strange 
clear scene outside the tomb at Bethany, where men 
stood wondering why Christ did not do what they ex- 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



27 



pected Him to do, and giving their faithful or their 
faithless explanations ! 

And now has not the same scene been repeated ever 
since ? This is what I want to speak of to you this 
morning. Some miracle is wrought; some manifesta- 
tion of the strength of the spiritual power of Christ is 
made. The whole world which recognizes the miracle 
shouts for joy. 44 How strong Christ is ! " it cries, and 
seems to feel as if for all time to come there could be 
nothing again like difficulty or doubt or lack of faith. 
Then by and by a new emergency occurs. Men say 
44 There is no danger; we know exactly what to do. 
The Christ who saved us yesterday will come again." 
They watch and listen confidently, but He does not 
come. The emergency works itself out to its catastro- 
phe. Then comes dismay. 44 Has Christ grown power- 
less or pitiless ? " or, 44 Were we then mistaken, and was 
that no Christ which saved us yesterday? If He did 
really open the eyes of the blind, surely He could have 
caused that this man should not have died. " So spring 
suspicions and misgivings ; so is scepticism born. But 
some souls stand serene and patient, with more spiritual 
insight into Christ and what He will do. 44 He will not 
work the same work twice ; He will do something new 
and greater. Let us wait and see." And by and by 
such faith is justified, and He who did not choose to 
cause that this man should not have died cries, " Laza- 
rus, come forth ; " and the greater miracle has taken 
place where the smaller miracle seemed to fail. 

No doubt in all times the illustrations of this truth 
have been abundant, but it would seem as if they were 



28 



The New and Greater Kiracle. 



especially plentiful to-day. For now the new is every- 
where opening out of the old, and the methods of God's 
treatment of His world are manifestly and bewilderingly 
changing. Take the whole subject of the difficulties of 
religious thought. How often in the past it has seemed 
at least to be the case that when difficult questions arose 
men were raised up to answer them ! In the great crises 
of the Church's life great souls like Athanasius, Augus- 
tine, Luther, Calvin, have stood forth, and with some 
great and timely word have seemed to satisfy men's 
souls and set their questionings at rest. But how is it 
to-day ? There never was more doubt or tumult. Never 
was the great human heart, seeking for truth, more be- 
wildered and distracted. How natural then is the cry 
which here and there breaks forth, " Where is the mighty 
champion of truth who is to come to-day and answer 
all these questions, as other champions have answered 
the hard questions of other days ? Where is the mal- 
leus hoereticorum who is to beat into fine dust these hard 
and puzzling adversaries of the truth ? " Now and then 
we hear reports that he has come. The rumor runs 
about that some book has been printed, or some voice 
has been raised which is to settle and make plain for- 
ever all that has grown so mixed and unintelligible. 
The rumor always ends in disappointment. The book 
or the teacher clears up perhaps some special point, or 
calms perhaps some corner of the tempest, but the great 
tumult of cloud still fills the sky. And then there 
comes to many men, there has come to very many men 
in these our days, another possibility, another hope. 
"What if it be that God has for His people in these 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



29 



days a better blessing than any which He gave to them 
of old ? What if instead of sending them a subtle and 
ingenious leader who can answer questions and put 
doubts to rest, He chooses by the very process of unan- 
swered questions and unresting doubts to bring the whole 
soul of man onto a higher level, into a broader light, and 
make it ready for a larger and completer faith ? " The 
difference between the old faith patched and made habit- 
able and a new faith where men with hearts wide open 
to the truth may go in and live without a fear, — this 
is the difference between the two sets of dreams which 
men are dreaming. One man expects to see old forms 
of faith restored, and thinks that doubt and all disturb- 
ance will be looked back on by and by as a mere dread- 
ful cloud through which the human soul has passed, 
coming out from it finally just as it entered in. Another 
man looks for a great re-birth of faith and expects to see 
mankind grateful forever that out of the very grave of 
unbelief there came a resurrection to a fuller spiritual 
life. All men who think at all about the strange condi- 
tion of religious things to-day belong to one or other of 
these classes. Which is the nobler dream ? Which 
dream is the more worthy both of God and man ? Which 
onens the more hopeful prospect for the years to come ? 

Nor is this true only about religious things. The 
real question everywhere is whether the world, dis- 
tracted and confused as everybody sees that it is, \& go- 
ing to be patched up and restored to what it used to be, 
or whether it is going forward into a quite new and 
different kind of life, whose exact nature nobody can 
pretend to foretell, but which is to be distinctly new, 



30 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



unlike the life of any age which the world has seen 
already. Men say, "The world has been disturbed 
before. Classes have clashed with one another. Gov- 
erned and governors, employed and employers, rich and 
poor, have come to blows in other days, but things have 
always adjusted themselves again. The stronger have 
grown kinder; the weaker have grown humbler; the 
paternal governor has grown more fatherly; the obe- 
dient subject has grown more filial, and things have 
gone on again as smoothly as before. " " So shall it be 
again, " men say. That is what they expect as the out- 
come of all this conflict. But other men' see clearer. 
It is impossible that the old conditions, so shaken and 
broken, can ever be repaired and stand just as they stood 
before. The time has come when something more than 
mere repair and restoration of the old is necessary. 
The old must die and a new must come forth out of its 
tomb. It is not going to be enough that the strong 
should once more grow kinder and the weak grow hum- 
bler. The balance and distribution of strength and weak- 
ness is being altered, must be altered more and more. 
The sources of artificial strength and artificial weakness 
are being dried up. Governors and governed, employers 
and employed, are coming to be co-workers for the same 
ends. Not the old mercies repeated, but new mercies 
going vastly deeper than the old, — these are what men 
are beginning to see that the world is needing and that 
God is giving to the world He loves. 

We think of the world's misery. Our souls are sick 
with the sight of hunger and nakedness and want. We 
cry out for the miracles of old ; we remember the manna 



The New and Greater Miracle. 31 

falling from the skies ; we see the loaves and fishes mul- 
tiplied beside the lake ; we wonder where is the mira- 
cle-worker now. Cannot He who fed the hungry Jews 
feed these hungry Americans ? We are ready to doubt 
the old story of His mercy, or to think He has forgotten 
to be gracious and ceased to care for these modern na- 
tions whom He has not " chosen. " And then, just as 
we are ready to give up to despair in one or other of 
these forms, we catch a glimpse of something better, of 
something which makes us see that the manna and the 
miraculous loaves and fishes, made perpetual, would be 
demoralizing and degrading. Some light comes on the 
necessity and nobility of struggle. We see the greater 
glory of the new miracle, — the miracle of the advancing 
civilization, whose purpose is not to do away with strug- 
gle but to make the conditions of struggle fair and the 
prospects of struggle hopeful. Into the spirit of that 
miracle we cast ourselves, not expecting to see the 
world's misery suddenly removed, but sure that at last 
the world, in and through its misery, will triumph over 
its misery by patience and diffused intelligence and mu- 
tual respect and brotherly kindness and the grace of 
God. 

To expect the miracles of the present and the future, 
not the miracles of the past, — is not that the secret of 
all living and progressive life ? There is no other life 
for a true man to live to-day. The man is weak and 
useless who, however devoutly, looks only for the repeti- 
tion of past miracles, good and great as those miracles 
were in their own time. Solemnly and surely — to 
some men terribly and awfully, to other men joyously 



32 The New and Greater Miracle. 

and enthusiastically — it is becoming clear to men that 
the future cannot be what the past has been. The 
world of the days to come is to be different from the 
world that has been. Every interest of life is altered ; 
government, society, business, education, all is altered, 
all is destined to alter more and more. Only these 
two elements remain the same, — God and man! 
What then shall we expect ? That God will guide man 
and supply him as He has in all the times which are 
past and gone, but that the new government and guid- 
ance will be different for the new days. He who be- 
lieves that, looks forward to changes of faith and changes 
of life without a fear, for underneath all the changes is 
the unchangeableness of God. The ship looks forward 
fearlessly to the new ocean with its new stars and new 
winds, for the same captain will sail her there who has 
sailed her here, and the fact that he will sail her there 
otherwise than he sails her here will be only the sign of 
how sleepless and watchful is his care. 

Is it not very interesting to see how sometimes in the 
typical life of Jesus there had to be the same struggle 
with which we are familiar, — to let go of one kind of 
mercy and pass on into another ? Twice especially the 
Lord cried out to be saved from the future which was 
just upon Him, " Father, save me from this hour ! " 
" Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. " 
Both of these are cries for deliverance. "Father, thou 
hast saved me, save me again ! " It is a cry for the re- 
peated miracle. But — how wonderful it is ! — both 
times, before the words are fully spoken, comes a fuller 
light ; the glory of a new and better miracle appears. 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



33 



4 No ! I cannot be saved from this hour, " " No ! I cannot 
see this cup pass from me except I drink it;" but 
" Father, glorify thy name, " " Father, not my will but 
thine be done ! " The miracle of escape is abandoned ; 
the miracle of victory is taken up. Thenceforth not to 
be saved from suffering but to save the world by suffer- 
ing is His hope and prayer. Is He not the type of the 
world He saved ? Is it not growing evident that there 
are many things which the world thus far has striven 
to escape which now it must strive, not to escape, but to 
overcome ? Duties which it has ignored, tasks which 
it has counted too great for its strength, problems for 
which it has thought that there was no answer, which 
now it must take up, with which it must grapple, by its 
victory in the struggle with which it must be judged. 
The best part of the world, seeing its new history before 
it, is saying just as Jesus said, first fearfully, " Father, 
save me from this hour, " and then bravely, " But for 
this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy 
name ! " 

It does not prove that the old miracle was not real, or 
that it was not the best miracle for its time ; but a new 
time is worthy and capable of a new miracle, and if it 
rises to its full privilege it does not ask that the old 
shall be preserved, but rather that out of the death of 
the old a better new may come to life. 

I bid you think what is the different and higher kind 
of faith which such a change involves ? They who, hear- 
ing that Lazarus was ill, believed that Christ would 
come and heal him as He had opened the blind man's 
eyes, had faith in the old miracle. They who were will- 



34 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



ing that Lazarus should die, knowing that death could 
not take him out of Christ's power, and that Christ 
would still do for him what was best, had faith in 
Christ. That is the difference. That is the great, ever- 
lasting difference of faiths. There is the faith in what 
God has done, which believes that He can do it again, 
and there is the faith in the God who did it, which be- 
lieves that He can do whatever else is needed in any day 
to come. Some men only let us believe in their actions ; 
other men's actions open to us themselves and make us 
believe in them. Some men, dealing with God, are sat- 
isfied to get at His ways of acting and fix their faith on 
them ; other men cannot be content unless through every- 
thing they come to God Himself, and knowing Him in 
His omnipotence, are ready to see ever new miracles 
issuing from His power as ever new sunbeams come 
streaming from the sun. The first man only looks to 
see the old machinery of the world and the Church re- 
paired and kept in order; the other man looks to see 
world and church ever made new, ever bearing new tes- 
timony that they are fresh and living utterances of Him 
who has always deep and richer manifestation of Him- 
self to make. 

My friends, do not be content with believing in God's 
ways of action. Insist on believing in God. Then the 
future will not take you by surprise. Then you will be 
ready not merely for the repetition of the miracles of 
the past, but for ever new and richer miracles, for you 
will feel above you and beneath you and around you the 
inexhaustibleness of the God in whom you believe. 

I have spoken mostly — perhaps too much — about the 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



35 



way in which one truth affects the larger expectations 
of the world; but it is no less true concerning each 
man's own personal career. Let me turn for a little 
while to that. For years you have lived, it may be, a 
secluded and protected life. " Lead me not into temp- 
tation," so you have prayed every morning, and every 
day has brought the answer to your prayer. But some 
day all that breaks and goes to pieces. A great temp- 
tation comes and is not hindered. Then you cry out for 
the old mercy and it is not given. What does it mean ? 
Was the old mercy no mercy ? Was it by mere accident 
that you so long escaped being tempted ? Or has God 
grown tired of protecting you ? Has He ceased to care ? 
Could not He who saved you so often save you again ? 
And then, behold what comes ! A new mercy ! You 
go into the temptation. Your old security perishes, but 
by and by out of its death comes a new strength. Not 
to be saved trom dying but to die and then to live 
again in a new security, a strong and trusty character, 
educated by trial, purified by fire, — that is what comes 
as the issue of the whole. Not a victory for you, pre- 
serving you from danger, but a victory in you, strength- 
ening you by danger, — that is the experience from which 
you go forth, strong with a strength which nothing can 
subdue. 

And if it is so with you, why shall it not be so also 
with the soul for which you care ? Here is your brother 
or your child. You have prayed that he might be 
shielded, and God has shielded him. The wickedness 
of the world has been for him as if it went on in another 
planet. The unbelief of men has never found him out, 



36 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



wrapped as he is in the unquestioned and unquestionable 
truth which you have taught him. Every night you have 
thanked God for the miracle of preservation safely con- 
tinued for another day. And then some day all that is 
over. The safe walls seem all to give way together ; the 
lurid flames burst in on the bewildered soul; the un- 
belief, shouting and arrogant, lifts itself up, and all the 
peace of settled, unquestioned faith is gone. You cry 
out for the old familiar miracle and it does not come. 
Oh, terrible day ! Oh, bitter anxiety ! Happy and wise 
and brave are you if, knowing that the day for the old 
miracle is past, you hope and wish and pray for it no 
longer, but make ready for the new miracle and for the 
help which it will be yours to render to the soul in the 
new life upon which it is to enter through its tempta- 
tion and its doubt. Happy and wise and brave are you 
if, discerning that Jesus has something better to do for 
Lazarus than to save him from dying, you stand ready 
to receive him as he comes out of the tomb, to loosen 
and take off his grave-clothes, to give him the raiment 
and the food of living men, and to welcome him into 
the new and larger life which has become possible to 
him through death. 

Suppose it is the death to which we more literally 
give that great and awful name. You have prayed that 
your child may live, and God, once and again, has 
spared his life. " Can He not spare it again ? " you 
cry upon some dreadful night as you stand by your 
child's sick-bed, counting the pulse, watching the fee- 
bler and feebler flutter of the breath. The morning 
comes and he is dead ! Has God been then deaf to your 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



37 



prayer ? Oh, if there is a new miracle, if beyond the 
miracle which saves from dying there is the miracle 
which brings through death to life beyond, then God 
has not been deaf ! Your child living with Him speaks 
back to you and says, " He who has saved me often has 
saved me now completely. I am alive : not from death 
but through death He has saved me. The last, best, 
greatest miracle has come, and I am alive, I am saved ; 1 
am alive and safe forever. " 

To that last miracle we must all come. A thousand 
times, yea, every perilous moment, God saves us from 
dying. There is a moment on the way for every one of 
us when that preservation will be possible no longer. 
We shall pray, our friends will pray for us, "Again, 
0 Father, spare him ; let him live. " And then the an- 
swer which is looked for will not come, and he who has 
been so often saved from dying at last will die. Will 
it be a sign of God's forge tfulness ? If so, then God has 
forgotten all His children, and let them every one, either 
in childhood or as life-worn veterans, slip through His 
careless hands ; for all have died or will die. But, no ; 
if, as we know is true, the real life lies beyond, and 
can be reached only through death, then the old mira- 
cles are nothing to this new one. They are to it as 
little as was the miracle by which at Nazareth Christ 
walked through the hostile multitude and went His way 
unharmed to the great miracle of resurrection, in which 
through Death the Lord of Life came forth to be alive 
for evermore. » 

Could not Christ have saved Lazarus from dying? 
Could not Chrisf save you or me from perplexity or 



38 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



from temptation or from doubt ? Surely those are ques- 
tions which have their lower and their higher answers. 
He could, because the power of life and death was in 
Him. But the power to use the power depended upon 
other things. It depended on the necessity which lay 
back of all things in Jesus to do the absolutely best 
thing, — not the second-best, but the absolutely best of 
all. If it were best for Lazarus to die, then Christ 
could not have caused that he should not have died. 
That is a sublime incapacity; to stand with the gift 
of life in the all-powerful hands, to see the cry for life 
in the eager eyes, to hear it in the dumb appeal of the 
terrified lips, and yet to say, " No, not life but death is 
best, " and so to be unable to give life, — that is a sub- 
lime, a divine incapacity ! Could not Christ have an- 
swered your prayer ? No, He could not ; not because the 
thing you asked for was not in His treasury, but because 
behind the question of His giving or refusing it there 
lay the fundamental necessity of His nature and His 
love, that He should do for you only the absolutely 
best. The thing you asked for was not absolutely best, 
therefore He could not give it. Back of how many 
unanswered prayers lies that divine impossibility ! 

Is it not true again that we must know not only Cod's 
way of acting but God Himself before all this can be 
perfectly accepted into our life ? Oh, how we make 
God a method, a law, a habit, a machine, instead of a 
great, dear, live, loving Nature, all afire with affection, 
all radiant with light, quick as light to discriminate 
and choose and shine with His own color on every na- 
ture where He falls ! This was what Jesus was so fuU 



The New and Greater Miracle. 



39 



of, — -the living God. He would not let God seem a 
method or a law. God was a life. And our theology, 
our ecclesiasticism, our religion is always trying to 
beat and trample Him down into a law again. How we 
have taken that great word Faith and made it mean the 
holding of set dogmas, when really what it means is 
the wide openness of a whole life to God ! How we have 
limited and stereotyped the range and possibility of 
miracle till only what God has done we think that God 
can do, and so do not stand ready for the ever new light 
and mercy and salvation which the Infinite Love, the 
Infinite Power, the Infinite God has to give ! 

Open your hearts to-day. God cannot merely do for 
you over and over again what He has done in the past. 
He must do more, — a new and deeper sight of His 
truth, a new and deeper obedience to His will. Oh, by 
and by, when Lazarus sat with them all at Bethany and 
the house was solemn with the resurrection life, how 
good then it seemed that Christ had not caused that 
this man should not have died! And the day will 
come sometime, somewhere for you when it will be 
your everlasting thankfulness that your Lord refused to 
just repeat the old familiar mercies of the past, but 
forced you through everything to let Him do for you the 
larger and larger mercies which your soul required. 
When He so tries to bless you with His largest blessing, 
may He make you ready to submit to be blessed ! 



III. 



THE PRIORITY OF GOD. 

We love Him because He first loved us. — 1 John iv. 19. 

John the Disciple had learned from Jesus, his Master, 
the truth of the priority of God, — the truth that be- 
fore everything is God. Some truths, when we have 
learned them, are to us like precious jewels which we 
keep in caskets, hidden most of the time from sight, 
our great satisfaction regarding them being simply 
their possession, — simply that they are ours. Other 
truths, when we have learned them, are like new coun- 
tries into which our lives have entered, and in which 
they thenceforth constantly live. There is a new sky 
over our head and a new earth under our feet. They 
fold themselves about us and touch every thought and 
action. Everything which we do or think or are is dif- 
ferent because of them. Of this second sort is the truth 
of the priority of God. Unless God had been first we — 
our whole human race in general and each of us in par- 
ticular — never would have been at all. We are what 
we are because He is what He is. Everything which 
we do God has first made it possible for us to do. Every 
act of ours, as soon as it is done, is grasped into a great 
world of activity which comes from Him ; and there the 
influence and effect of our action is determined. Every- 



The Priority of God. 



41 



thing that we know, is true already before our knowl- 
edge of it. Our knowing it is only the opening of our 
intelligence to receive what is and always has been a 
part of His being who is the universal Truth. Every 
deed or temper or life is good or bad as it is in harmony 
or out of harmony with Him. Everywhere God is first ; 
and man, coming afterward, enters into Him and finds 
in God the setting and the background of his life. 
There is no part of life which is not different if that is 
true. What J ohn learned in mind and soul from Jesus 
was that that is true. I ask you this morning to dwell 
with me on the truth which He who is our Master 
teaches to us as He taught it to this great disciple 
long ago. ^ 

We may say a few words first upon the whole subject 
of the backgrounds of life in general. Man never is sent 
first into the world and bidden to evolve out of his own 
being the conditions in which he is to live. Always 
something is before him; always there is a landscape 
in which he finds his figure standing when he becomes 
conscious of himself. If we go back to the story of the 
Book of Genesis, behold ! the earth is made before the 
human creature comes. The light and the firmament, 
and the sun and the moon, the grass and the ocean and 
the living creatures, — they are all here. The earth is 
this sumptuous palace of luxuries, this rich treasury of 
influences, before God says, " Let us make man. " 

Natural science has the same story to tell. It is into 
a furnished and a garnished earth that man steps forth. 
His earliest figure stands against the background of 
abundant pre-existent life. And coming down out of 



42 



The Priority of God. 



the antique stories into the picture which we see to-day, 
is there not something before man everywhere ? Does 
not every part of him, each sense and faculty, find the 
provision for its exercise, the provocation and education 
of its use, in something which was before he came, 
against which each new-discovered power of his lays 
itself and knows itself and comes to its exquisite enjoy- 
ment and ripe growth ? The food is before the hunger, 
and says, " I have waited for you to come. " The river 
is before the thirst. Beauty was in the sky and on the 
hills before the eye was fashioned. Music was breath- 
ing on the winds before the ear was framed. Fragrance 
was in the violet and the forest before the nostrils 
came to catch its odor. The picture was before the 
imagination which discerned it; the sea before the 
ship that sailed it. Man finds the rocks waiting with 
their problems, frost and heat holding their inspira- 
tion and their comfort in expectation of his coming. 
And he never says, " Here I am, " that the servants do 
not stand in ranks at the door of his great homestead to 
welcome the heir into his own, and to pledge him their 
obedient service. The material is background for the 
spiritual, — the earth, which is body, for man, who is 
soul. 

A child was born yesterday. How he lies to-day in 
his serene, superb unconsciousness ! And all the forces 
and resources of the earth are gathered about his cradle 
offering themselves to him. Each of his new-born 
senses is besieged. Each eager voice cries out to him, 
Here I am. I have waited for you. Here I am. " He 
takes what they all bring as if it were his right. Not 



The Priority of God. 



43 



merely on his senses, but even on his mind and most 
unconscious soul, the world into which he has come is 
pressing itself. Its conventionalities and creeds, its 
standards beaten out of the experience of uncounted gen- 
3rations, its traditions of hope and danger, its preju- 
dices and limitations and precedents, all its discoveries 
and hopes and fears, — they are the scenery in which 
this new life stands, they are the mountains in whose 
shadow and the skies in whose light he is to unfold his 
long career. They are here before him, and he comes 
into them. You cannot separate him and them from 
each other. He and his world make one system, one 
rich, complex unit of life, as he lies this Sunday morn- 
ing in his cradle, sleeping his unsuspecting sleep. 

Shall we talk about all this as if it were a bondage 
into which the new child is born ? Shall we dream 
for him of a freedom which he might have had if noth- 
ing had been before him, if he had found nothing here 
when he came ? Surely that is no true way to think 
about it. There are men who, if they cannot destroy 
the world of assured truths and accepted ways into 
which they have been born, would at least destroy the 
consciousness of it. They would ignore it. They would 
seem at least to be trying experiments as if nothing had 
yet been proved. They would live as if they were the 
first man, with no history to rest upon, — almost as if 
they could reverse the course of Genesis and make the 
round earth and the whole of Nature issue from and fol- 
low them instead of their issuing from and following it. 
We have all known men more or less of this sort ; and, 
interesting as many of them have been, suggestive as 



44 



The Priority of God. 



their lives have often been, we have all felt, I am sure, the 
weakness that was in them. They have lacked coher- 
ence and unity with the great world. They have lacked 
humility. They have been self-asserting. The note 
which their life made has not blended with the music 
of the whole, but has been strange and violent. It has 
seemed as if a man of this kind thought that he must 
make the world before he could live in it, as if his 
knowing the truth was what made it true, and his 
doing of righteousness was what made it righteous. 

Far be it from me to deny the exceptional value of 
such men ; but their value is the value of protest and 
exception. There is always something gaunt and fever- 
ish and wild about their look. The normal, healthy 
human life lives in its environments and keeps its back- 
grounds. It is not their slave, but their child. They 
were before it; and its strength is to know that it 
comes into their richness. It recognizes their priority. 
It fastens itself into them, and realizes and fulfils its 
life by them, and makes in its due time along with them 
the background for the lives of the years to come. 

Now all of this is not religious, save in the very larg- 
est sense ; but all of this becomes distinctively religious 
the moment that all this background of life gathers it- 
self into a unity of purpose and intention and becomes a 
Providence, or care of God. When once that truth has 
opened on us, then all the interest of life centres in and 
radiates from this, — that He, God, is before it all. All 
the welcome which Nature gave us on the bright morn- 
ing when we came was His welcome. All the depth ol 
Truth out of which our opinions have shaped themselves 



The Priority of God. 



45 



and from which our creeds draw their inspiration and 
dignity, was He, the everlasting truth. See what a 
change has come. It is as when up the morning sky, 
all coldly beautiful with ordered ranks of cloud on 
cloud, is poured the glow of sunrise, and every least 
cloud, still the same in place and shape, burns with the 
transfiguring splendor of the sun. So is it when the pri- 
ority of existence is seen to rest in a Person, and the 
background of life is God. Then every new arrival in- 
stantly reports itself to Him, and is described in terms of 
its relationship to Him. Every activity of ours answers 
to some previous activity of His. Do we hope ? It is 
because we have caught the sound of some promise of 
His. Do we fear ? It is because we have had some 
glimpse of the dreadfulness of getting out of harmony 
with Him. Are we curious and inquiring ? It is that we 
may learn some of His truth. Do we resist evil ? We 
are righting His enemies. Do we help need ? We are 
relieving His children. Do we love Him ? It is an an- 
swer of gratitude for His love to us. Do we live ? It 
is a projection and extension of His being. Do we die ? 
It is the going home of our immortal souls to Him. 

Oh, the wonderful richness of life when it is all thus 
backed with the priority of God ! It is the great illu- 
mination of all living. And the wonder of it is the 
^ay in which, in that illumination, the soul of man 
recognizes its right. This is what it was made for. 
Everything, until that light was poured into it, was 
half-born, cold, and incomplete, like the drawing with- 
out the color, like the morning sky before the sunrise. 
Take the single experience of joy. You have been very 



46 



The Priority of God. 



glad. Some particular delight or some great perpetual 
radiance of happiness has poured itself down upon your 
life. You have waked singing in the morning. You 
have fallen asleep with songs upon your lips at night. 
Men have beheld you in the street, and said, "How 
glad he is, " and felt their own life brighter, their own 
burden lighter as they passed you by. Suppose that 
some day behind your happiness opens the depth of God. 
Suppose that it all turns to gratitude. It all is seen 
to come streaming out of the exhaustless fountain of 
His love. Tell me, is it the same ? Is there no deeper 
color in its radiance, no deeper music in its song ? Has 
it gained nothing of spirituality and peace ? Has not 
the joy lifted its face skyward and been filled with a 
new light ? 

Or if it has been not joy but deep distress, — pain of 
the poor racked body or of the perplexed and wounded 
spirit, — it is still the same. You have gone up and 
down the earth in sadness, and behind that sadness 
too has opened God, — God not in anger and revenge, 
not hurling the arrows of your torment from his in- 
dignant wrath, not vexing and worrying you with 
peevish spite, but God full of pity, pitiful just in pro- 
portion to His holiness ; God anxious to help, and watch- 
ing that the worst tragedy of pain may not happen, that 
the pain may not come and go and leave no education 
and blessing. Let this open behind your pain, and is 
not pain transfigured ? Not removed but transfigured, 
made something more than tolerable, pervaded with a 
low, strong light, and filled, as the joy was, with peace. 

The same is true of all experiences. The same is 



The Priority of God. 



4? 



true of that sum of all experiences which we call life. 
A man's world, stretching back and back, farther and 
farther, finds back of all, before all, God. The world 
becomes religious. Oh, those old words, that old phrase, 
" the religious world, " — what a poor, petty, vulgar thing 
it often has been made to mean ! " The religious world, " 
in the language of the newspapers, is almost sure to 
mean a little section of humanity claiming monopoly of 
divine influences and making the whole thought of 
man's intercourse with God cheap and irreverent by 
vicious quarrels and mercenary selfishness. "The re- 
ligious world " is the world of ecclesiastical machin- 
eries and conventions and arrangements. But look ! 
See what the religious world really is in its idea, and 
shall be when it shall finally be realized. A world 
everywhere aware of and rejoicing in the priority of 
God, feeling all power flow out from Him, and sending 
all action back to report itself to Him for judgment, — 
a world where goodness means obedience to God, and 
sin means disloyalty to God, and progress means growth 
in the power to utter God, and knowledge means the 
understanding of God's thought, and happiness means 
the peace of God's approval. That is the religious 
world. That is the only world which is religious. It 
is the world of which Isaiah and Habakkuk dreamed, 
in which " the earth should be filled with the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea. " 

And now we want to go on and see how all this truth 
comes to the full display of its richness in the Christian 
faith. The Christian faith is the sum and flower of the 
religious life of man. Whatever has struggled in all 



48 



The Priority of God. 



other religions comes to its free and full expression 
there. And so the truth of the priority of God is the 
first and fundamental truth of Christianity. Remem- 
ber how it all begins. Jesus is sitting with Nicode- 
mus, and telling him what He wants him to believe 
What is it ? Is it of a fermentation in humanity, — a 
loving impulse, a reaching up of man after a Deity whom 
he has discovered, to which at last God, out of His dis- 
tant heaven, graciously responds ? It distinctly is not 
that. " God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son. " It is a movement from the side of God. 
Everything which Christianity conceives of man as do- 
ing, everything which Christianity bids man do, is in 
answer to some previous activity of God. God has 
given a law which you have broken. That is sin. God 
. has offered a forgiveness and new life which you may, 
which you must, accept. That is salvation. Behold 
how all that we saw in the relation of man to Nature, 
all that was richly involved in the very fact of Re- 
ligion, burns out in most complete expression in the 
Religion of Religions, in the Gospel of the Son of 
God, who becomes the Son of Man. 

If I enter into the spirit of the narratives and see how 
Jesus approached the people whom He wished to save, 
I find the same thing everywhere. Did He meet them 
in the streets, did He step across the thresholds of theii 
houses, and say to them, " You must love God, " calling 
upon them for an adventurous excursion into an un- 
known land to which they could not tell whether they 
would find an open door or not ? It was always a rev- 
elation. It was always, "God loves you." He went 



Tlie Priority of God. 



49 



about saying that from house to house, from man to 
man. He said it to the Publican, the Magdalen, the 
Pharisee. He said it by His sermon, His miracle, and 
finally His cross. He built this background behind 
every life. He spread this great sky over every soul, 
and then He looked to see the great compulsion, " You 
must love God," "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," 
grasp every nature, not as a hard commandment, but as 
a warm necessity to which the nature yields as a cloud 
yields to the atmosphere and melts into the sky. 

What will you do if you are sent to carry the Gospel 
to your friend, your child ? Will you stand over him 
and say, "You must love God; you will suffer for it 
if you do not " ? When was ever love begotten so ? 
" Who is God ? " " Why should I love Him ? " " How 
can I love Him," answers back the poor, bewildered 
heart, and turns to the things of earth which with their 
earthly affections seem to love it, and satisfies itself in 
loving them. Or perhaps it grows defiant, and says, " I 
will not," flinging back your exhortation as the cold 
stone flings back the sunlight. But you say to your 
friend, your child, " God loves you, " say it in every 
language of yours, in every vernacular of his, which you 
can command, and his love is taken by surprise, and he 
wakes to the knowledge that he does love God without 
a resolution that he will. 

So it is that children come to love their fathers and 
their mothers everywhere. There is no struggle after 
an uncertain thing. You do not urge them or exhort 
them. They are set into the lives which are before 
their lives, and the love of those lives flows into them 

4 



50 



The Priority of God. 



and becomes their love. The real reason why men do 
not love God is that they do not really believe that God 
loves them. That does not take their blame away, but 
it does shift it and put it in the right place. They are 
to blame, grievously to blame, because they have made 
their lives so base and poor that they cannot believe 
that God loves them. There is where the attack must 
be made and the victory won. Fix their thoughts not 
on themselves but on God. Make them see that God is 
such that He must love His children, however base and 
poor they be, and then love becomes possible from them 
to Him, because its great cause, its depth of spiritual 
reason and reality, is there. 

Sometimes far out at sea the sailor sees the sky 
grow tremulous and troubled. The cloud seems to be 
all unable to contain itself; its under surface wavers 
and stretches downward toward the ocean. It is as if it 
yearned and thirsted for the kindred water. A great 
grasping hand is reached downward and feels after the 
waves. And then the sailor looks beneath, and lo, 
the surface of the waves is troubled too ; and out from 
the water comes first a mere tremble and confusion, 
and then by and by a column of water builds itself, 
growing steadier and steadier, until at last it grasps the 
hand out of the cloud, and one strong pillar reaches 
from the sea into the heavens, from the heavens to the 
sea, and the heavens and the sea are one. So you must 
make man know that God loves him, and then look to 
see man love God. 

How shall you make man know that God loves him ? 
In every way, — there is no speech nor language in 



The Priority of God. 



51 



which that voice may not be heard, — but most of all 
by loving the man with a great love yourself, by a lofty 
and generous affection of which he shall know that, 
coming through you, it comes from beyond you, and 
say, " It is my Father that my brother utters, " and so 
be led up to the Father's heart. We talk about men's 
reaching through Nature up to Nature's God. It is 
nothing to the way in which they may reach through 
manhood up to manhood's God, and learn the divine 
love by the human. God make us all such revelations 
of His love to some of His children ! 

We may think again not of the way in which we shall 
get our friends and brethren to love God, but of the way 
in which we shall get ourselves to love Him. Oh, the 
old struggles ! How many of us have said, " I will love 
God; I ought to, and I will," and so have wrestled 
and struggled to do what they could not do, — what in 
their hearts they knew no real reason for doing, — and 
have miserably failed, and now are satisfying them- 
selves with loveless obedience, or else have left God 
altogether and tell their hearts that they must forego 
all such beautiful, hopeless ambitions. Ah, my friend, 
what you need is to get away round upon the other side 
of the whole matter. It is not whether you love God 
but whether God loves you. If He does, and if you can 
know that He does, then give yourself up totally and 
unquestioningly to the assurance of that love. Rejoice 
in it by day and night. Go singing for the joy of it 
about your work and your play. Let no man, however 
wise, persuade you that you have not a right to the sat- 
isfaction of that love. You have. It does not wait for 



52 The Priority of God. 

your summons. Of course it does not wait for your re- 
sponse. How could the offer say, " I will not give my- 
self to you till you accept me first ? " But as you go 
singing for joy that God loves you, behold the response 
is born before you know it, and you are loving God as 
countless souls have always loved Him, in Saint John's 
old way, " because He first loved you. " 

Sometimes it seems good to sweep aside all the com- 
plications of spiritual experience and bring it all to 
absolute simplicity. Here is God, and here is a child 
of God. The Father loves the child, not because the 
child is this or that, or anything but just His child. 
He says to you, " Go save my child for me. " And you 
say, " How, my Father ? " And He says, " By Me. " 
And you say, " Yes, I see, " and go and take the Father's 
love and press it on that child of His, just as you 
find him. You do not ask him how he feels about it, 
any more than you ask the wood how it feels about the 
fire which you bring to it. You know that the fire and 
the wood belong together. You are sure that if the 
fire gets at the wood, the wood will burn, and by and 
by, look ! the wood is burning. The wood turns to fire 
because the fire gave itself to the wood. The wood 
loves the fire because the fire first loved it. 

It is the way in which one man gives himself to an- 
other man ; and shall God be more cautious and prudent 
in His gift ? If you want your fellow-man to trust you, 
you must trust him first. With frank, free cordialness 
you give yourself to him and he responds. All stingy 
caution and reserve defeats itself. The same trust, only 
infinitely greater, is in the Cross of Christ. It does 



The Priority of God. 



53 



not always at once succeed. As in the Parable, God 
says, " They will reverence my Son, " and this man or 
that gives Him not reverence but scorn ; but neverthe- 
less it is that trust of God in man that saves the world. 
God trusts Himself to man, and countless souls in 
answer trust themselves to God. 

Sometimes the great world and the human life which 
it contains grow wonderfully simple. Its mixed confu- 
sion disappears. Its one or two great certainties stand 
out to view. It all seems for one bright moment to come 
just to this, — if there is a God, everything is right, if 
there is no God, everything is wrong. And there is a 
God. There is a God. Therefore all is right at the 
bottom and in the end. Into the world all full of God 
comes man, and God is there before him. He finds God 
there. God takes him as he comes. Sometimes he 
talks as if he made God, and could make God over 
again to be what he would. But God made him. And 
it is to the God who made him that he comes. "Of 
Him and through Him and to Him are all things." 
All is well! 

And now I wonder whether in some of your minds 
there does not come a question regarding all this that 
I have said. " After all, " you may ask yourself, " what 
does it matter ? If the end is gained, if God and man 
come together, what matter is it from which side the 
first impulse came, — whether God went out to seek 
man, or man with daring spiritual impulse rose up and 
went and clamored at the gates of God ? " But must it 
not make a difference ? Is there a situation or a fact or 
a condition anywhere which is absolute and identical, 



54 



The Priority of God. 



and does not vary with the character of him who occu- 
pies it ? And one of the strongest elements in making 
the character of him who occupies a situation is the way 
by which he came there. It is not enough that a man 
stands upon the mountain-top. I must know the path 
by which he climbed. It is not enough that a man 
walks in the dark valley. I must know what brought 
him there. The man is more than the situation. The 
situation means little without the soul of the man giv- 
ing it its meaning. 

When then I see man reconciled to God and walking 
with his Lord in the white garment of a new life, it 
makes vast difference what is the spirit of that recon- 
ciled, regenerated man. If it is the first fact of his new 
existence — that which he never loses for a moment — 
that the impulse of it came from God ; that God sought 
him ; that before he ever thought of the higher life, its 
halls were made ready for him, and its Lord came forth 
into the wilderness to find him and to bring him in, 
— then the strength of a profound humility is always 
with him. The paralysis of pride does not creep over 
him. Into his feebleness, through the openness of his 
humility, there is always pouring the power of God. 
It is not so much he that stands upon the mountain or 
walks in the valley, but the God who brought him there 
stands or walks there in him ; and it is God's work that 
is being done, God's life that is being lived. He is 
full of the humility which exalts and strengthens. 

Besides this, the appeal of the new life to the soul 
which lives it is largely bound up with the truth of the 
priority of God. To know that long before I cared for 



The Priority of God. 



5o 



Him, He cared for me ; that while I wandered up and 
down in carelessness, perhaps while I was plunging 
deep in flagrant sin, God's eye was never off me for a 
moment, He was always watching for the instant when 
His hand might touch me and His voice might speak to 
me, — there is nothing which can appeal to a man like 
that. The man is stone whom that does not appeal to. 
When, touched by the knowledge of that untiring love, 
a man gives himself at last to God, every act of loving 
service which he does aftewards is fired and colored 
by the power of gratitude, surprised gratitude, out of 
which it springs. How shall he overtake this love which 
has so much the start of him ? This is what makes his 
service eager and enthusiastic. It is a " reasonable ser- 
vice, " justified by the sublime reason of the soul which 
loves its God because He first loved it. 

Again this truth, that God is first, gives me the right 
to keep a strong and lively hope for all my fellow-men. 
It gives me also the chance to believe that I can help 
them. It is all hopeless if I have to stir them from 
their lethargy and force them over distant hill and dale 
to find a distant God who will not care about them till 
He sees them coming. But, behold ! God is here. He 
is infinitely nearer to them than I can come. Perhaps 
they are loving and serving Him already in ways which 
are so thoroughly their own ways that I cannot recognize 
them I have only to tell them over and over again 
how near He is ; I have only to beg them to open their 
eyes and see ! 

Sometimes in our faithlessness it seems to us as if 
we had to do very much more than that. It seems as if 



56 



The Priority of God. 



we had to go and find God, and bid Him love this child 
of His, It seems as if we had to remake God's child into 
such a being as God could love ! We almost act as if 
we must introduce God and this man to one another ! 
Ah, let the veil drop from your eyes ! See how it really 
is ! God loved this man before you dreamed of loving 
him. God loves him deeper than you imagine. What 
can you do, what need you do, but hold your life in 
such a way, and make it such a life, that besides the 
direct radiance of God's love, which is pouring on him 
all the time, some indirect testimony may be borne by 
you, that so this brother man may a little more speed- 
ily and clearly see the love of God f 

Have I talked to-day too generally of the priority of 
God ? Then make it absolutely special and concrete. 
There is some duty which God has made ready for you 
to do to-morrow ; nay, to-day ! He has built it like a 
house for you to occupy. You have not to build it. He 
has built it, and He will lead you up to its door and set 
you with your feet upon its threshold. Will you go in 
and occupy it ? Will you do the duty which He has 
made ready ? Perhaps it is the great comprehensive 
duty of the consecration of yourself to Him. Perhaps 
it is some special task. Whatever it is, may He whc 
anticipated your love by His own in giving .you the 
task, now help you to fulfil His love with yours by 
doiag it. Amen. 



XV. 



IDENTITY AND VARIETY. 

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and 
another glory of the stars ; for one star differeth from another star in 
glory. — 1 Cor. xv. 41. 

These words are part of Saint Paul's great argument 
for immortality. His reasoning has caught fire. It has 
become far more than a mere piece of logic, although it 
has not lost its logical consistency. Before him as he 
reasons there has opened up the splendor of the thing 
he pleads for ; as he talks of heaven he has been caught 
up into heaven, and sees the glory of the everlasting 
life. 

The way in which he comes to the particular words 
which are my text is this, — he has been claiming man's 
resurrection on the strength of Christ's. Christ has 
risen and entered into glory. Man too, because he is one 
in human nature with Christ, must also rise. "Now 
is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits 
of them that slept." But then the great misgiving 
came, Can man's life undergo a change like that and 
yet be truly his ? Must he not be another being if he 
enters on such a different condition ? If he remains 
the same being, must he not ever repeat the same ex- 
periences which are bound up with his very nature ? 



58 



Identity and Variety. 



Are real identity and such variety compatible with one 
another ? 

Paul sets himself to answer those questions. First 
comes his beautiful parable of the seed and the plant. 
"That which thou sowest is not quickened except it 
die ; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that 
body which shall be, but bare grain. But God giveth 
it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed its 
own body. " The vital principle is too spiritual to be 
confined to one form. It passes from one form into 
another which is wholly different, and yet it remains es- 
sentially the same. The buried seed and the wheat 
waving in the sunshine are the same, and yet how dif- 
ferent they are ! Then he passes to a yet more brilliant 
illustration. There is a power of life which pervades 
the universe. Everywhere it is identical ; everywhere 
it is glorious. It shines in everything. By it sun, 
moon, and stars are clothed with radiance. But how 
different is the splendor which it gives to each! It 
fills each with itself; and lo, the result! "There is 
one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, 
and another glory of the stars ; for one star differeth 
from another star in glory, " — the same life keeping 
itself the same through every change, yet changing 
so completely. Shall not then this human life, still 
keeping itself the same human life, be able to go up to 
heaven and stand in the light of God ? That is Paul's 
argument. 

It is not so much the way in which his argument 
bears upon human immortality that I wish to speak 
about to-day, — though to that we will return at last,— 



Identity and Variety. 



59 



it is rather this whole idea of identity and variety co- 
existing and ministering to each other, and of the in- 
terest and beauty which that idea gives to the world. 
But notice first of all how Saint Paul builds his argu- 
ment for immortality upon the richness and the splendor 
of this mortal life. Because this world is so great and 
beautiful, therefore there must be another greater and 
still more beautiful. Often enough have men made 
heaven a compensation for the woes of earth. Often 
enough have men said, " Because this world is so full of 
wretchedness, therefore there must be another world, 
where the starved soul shall be fed, and the wounded 
soul healed, and the frozen soul warmed. " Paul makes 
heaven not a compensation, but a development. Be- 
cause this world is so glorious, therefore the glory of 
heaven must be surpassing and unspeakable. How 
much nobler is Paul's way! How much fuller of in- 
spiration and of genuine faith ! 

One sign of how much greater Paul's way is, lies in 
the higher life which it will make for one who uses and 
believes in it. For he who finds in the manifold glo- 
ries of this mortal life a symbol and witness of the glo- 
ries which belong to immortality will always be led to 
live this life as intensely and profoundly as he can, in 
order that the higher life may become real and attrac- 
tive to him. Men have thought that they must separate 
themselves from earth in order that they might believe 
in heaven. Paul's doctrine says emphatically, "No!" 
He says, " The deeper that you go in life, the more life 
must spread itself out around you and become eternity. 
He who gets to the centre feels the sphere. Live 



60 



Identity and Variety. 



lightly, superficially, and formally, think little, make 
little of life, and it will be little to you. Think much, 
make much of life, and it will assert its greatness and 
prophesy its continuance. " Indeed his doctrine seems 
to teach almost this : that immortality is not a truth to 
be directly striven for and proved, but a truth which 
will open itself to and fold itself around the man who 
deeply reaches the meaning of this life, — the man who 
realizes in living how identity and variety blend and 
unite to make the richness and solemnity of existence. 

Identity and variety; identity and difference. Do 
we not feel even as we say the words together how 
they express together the tone and feeling which our 
thought of life demands ? Identity sounds solid and 
substantial ; it means the steady, continuous, unchanged 
quality of things; it almost suggests monotony; it is 
dimly haunted with misgivings and fears of dulness. 
On the other hand variety is vital. It quivers with the 
constant expectation of change ; it is full of the interest 
of novelty ; it sparkles and rustles, and is sensitive and 
open to all influences. If it has a danger, it is not dul- 
ness but restlessness; not heaviness but lightness is 
what it has to dread. But join the two ; quicken iden- 
tity with variety; steady variety with identity; make 
the man always himself, yet let him always feel the 
power of new conditions opening around him, — and then 
have you not made the best and happiest life ? You 
have preserved at once responsibility and hope; fou 
have gained both stability and movement; your man 
is at once a rock to build on and a wind of living 
inspiration. 



Identity and Variety. 



61 



Think of the men whom you know best and who have 
been most to your life, and I am sure that you will find 
in them these qualities in highest union. They have 
been the men who, you were sure, always were them- 
selves, and yet men who have felt the largeness and rich- 
ness of life, and so who have made changes ever from 
condition to condition. In the union of these two quali- 
ties lay their helpfulness and strength. 

But let us trace a little more largely how this union 
of identity and difference pervades the universe, and 
how wherever it appears it gives richness and depth. 

I wish I knew enough of the great world of physical 
Nature to realize how true it must be there, in the re- 
gion to which Saint Paul's image first transports the 
mind. The most ignorant observer, the merest lounger 
by the rivers or among the mountains, can catch sight 
of it, — the genuine reality of Nature as one true exist- 
ence, and yet the manifold variety with which the 
whole earth teems, in which Nature embodies herself. 
The lark and the lily, the sunbeam and the flashing 
river, the mountain and the ocean and the man, — it 
takes but the most elementary sensitiveness to feel the 
oneness of them all ; while still our eyes and ears and 
all our senses are tingling with the tidings of their 
difference which they are always sending. I stand in 
awe and wonder when I think how delightful and in> 
prcssive this must grow to a great naturalist, as year 
after year he learns more of Nature's countless differ- 
ences ; and yet year by year, the more he knows her dif- 
ferences, she — the one Nature, the single being, great 
and gracious — issues from her vast variety, and shows 



62 



Identity and Variety. 



herself to him. It must be a life full of fascination, 
— the eternal, undivided glory never losing its divine 
unity, ever unfolding itself into " one glory of the sun, 
and another glory of the moon, and another glory of 
the stars." 

Pause here a moment as we pass, to think how when 
Saint Paul wants to depict the vast variety of which the 
world is full, it was distinctly as a variety of glory that 
he conceived of it. Enough he knew of the variety of 
woe. Easily enough he might have depicted how man, 
the same man still, was tossed from suffering to suffer- 
ing and remained the same identical miserable sufferer 
in all. It would have been the same truth taught upon 
its darker side. But Paul knew that the true side on 
which to teach it was its side of light. The real va- 
riety of life is a variety of glories. Such a choice of 
the side from which to draw his illustration is a noble 
characteristic of Saint Paul. It is a sign of how healthy 
he is. Change from glory into glory, — that was what 
life seemed to him. Remember, it is no rapturous and 
untired boy who is talking ; it is a man all sore with 
sorrow, beaten and broken with disappointment and 
distress. Is it not a sign of what a true Christian he 
was that life seemed to him still to be only a variety 
and constant interchange of glories ? 

But turn from physical Nature and think of the 
history of man. How true it is that history cannot be 
rightly understood unless it is illumined by this double 
truth of the identity and difference of life. The ages 
come and go, each stamped with its own character. 
There are the ages of war, and the ages of peace; the 



Identity and Variety. 



63 



centuries of thought, and the centuries of action; the 
times of faith, the times of philanthropy, the times of 
philosophy, the times of prospect and of retrospect, of cer- 
tainty and of doubt, — each has its glory. In the eyes 
of the inhabitants of each it seems as if all other times 
were inglorious by the side of theirs. The truth of the 
difference of ages is most manifest and claims the first 
importance ; but all the time the other truth of identity 
is always true, and is always making its assertion. 
The time is great which in the midst of its self-value 
is conscious always of the deeper value which belongs 
to the long life of man. We rejoice in the nineteenth 
century. We believe that there has been since Adam 
no century so good to live in. But greater than the 
nineteenth century is the sum of all the centuries, — this 
varied, ever-changing life of man. One long, unbroken 
nineteenth century from Adam all the way to us would 
be terrible indeed. The ages of the cloisters and the 
castles, of the dreams and mysteries, of the starlight 
and the moonlight, they are all needed in the sky of 
universal history ; each of them, while it is thoroughly 
itself, may be proud and glad of all the rest. 

And so with nations. We say England, France, It- 
aly, America. What mere geographers we are unless 
as we say each of those names a very being stands be- 
fore us, — a being with a character, a being unlike all 
the others, and yet bearing a true identity with them 
because both it and they are made of men, and have 
shaped all their ways and institutions out of the needs 
of the same old manhood living on the same old earth. 
The nations learn more and more how the advantage 



64 



Identity and Variety. 



of one is the advantage of all. Great universal tenden 
cies are bringing them to more and more of likeness 
with each other. Not quite so far-away and impossible 
a dream appears "the parliament of man, the federa 
tion of the world." But more terrible almost than that 
absolute diversity and consequent hostility, would be 
the perfect identity of nations. The nations, like great 
children, match themselves with each other, compare 
their characteristics, call each other small or great, are 
filled with contempt or envy; but really it is not a 
question of smaller or greater, it is a question of the 
difference of glory. Palestine or Grece or Rome, — 
who shall decide, who cares to decide, their rank ? 
"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of 
the moon, and another glory of the stars," and all 
together fill the radiant sky. 

Or take another illustration, from the occupations of 
mankind. Three men are close together on the street. 
One of them makes shoes, another writes books, an- 
other is mayor of the city. It is foolish and false to 
say that there is no rank and precedence between the 
lives which those three men live. One of their lives 
demands higher powers and offers the opportunity of 
higher education than the others. It is perfectly right 
and wise that the shoemaker, if he feels in himself the 
power, should aspire to leave his shoemaker's bench 
and become in his turn the mayor of the city; but 
there are other truths besides this truth of rank and 
precedence. The truth that quite apart from all com 
parison with other arts, each of these arts has abso 
lute standards of its own, has its own bad wavs and 



Identity and Variety. 65 

good ways of doing its own work, has its own high 
and noble way of being done ; and the truth that each 
art, so far as it lives up to its own best standards, be- 
comes a true utterance of universal human nature, 
an utterance which gets its value from the fact that it 
is at once identical with and different from all other 
utterances, — these are the real truths about men's arts 
and occupations which are most important. It is these 
truths which make the thronged streets of a great city 
food for thought and imagination. They clothe the vast 
buildings in which men do their various work with a 
fascination and an interest which the trees of the state- 
liest forest in springtime or in autumn cannot begin to 
match; they give dignity and pathos and meaning to 
our colleges and schools ; they make the richness and 
the harmony of all active life. 

And so our illustrations bring us at last to human 
character There, in the difference and the identity of 
personal human natures, is the fullest exhibition of the 
two truths of identity and of variety, and of their essen- 
tialness to one another. Here is the endless variety. 
Men are thoughtful or active, spontaneous or mechani- 
cal, conservative or radical, simple or elaborate, — 
where is the end of the differences which we might de- 
scribe ? And yet below all differences men are men 
The endless variations are all wrought upon one single 
mighty strain. Think of the dreadful loss if either of 
these truths should fail. If the variety fails, mankind 
is a great, dreary, indistinguishable monotony. If the 
identity fails, mankind is a great tumult of confused 
and unharmonious particles which have no kinship 

b 



66 



Identity and Variety. 



with, no lesson for, each other. How unreligious, how 
unchristian either of those conditions is any one knows 
who has entered at all deeply into the truth of Christ 
and into the spirit of the Incarnation. Christ is at once 
the inspiration of the individual and also the assertion 
— such as the world has never heard before — of the 
identity of man. He is the Revealer of the Father- 
hood of God, we^ say. Think what that means. He 
builds mankind into a family ; and where as in a family 
is every life distinct and yet are all lives one ? That 
household of your own, — is not its beauty here, that 
in it every child's nature and ways and destiny are a dis- 
tinct and special study, and yet that a sweet, subtle 
unity runs through the whole and makes it one ? One 
blood runs in the veins, one spirit looks out of the eyes 
of all, — identity and difference, not in contention with 
each other but confederate, helping each other, make 
the completeness o* the family life. Conceive Christ's 
thought of the human race ; see all humanity, as he saw 
it, as one great family ; and then there too there is the 
harmony of these two truths, and every man honors his 
individual existence, while he rejoices in the oneness of 
the mighty whole. 

A new child is born into the world to-day, this Sun- 
day morning. What shall you say as you stand beside 
his cradle ? Shall not two consciousnesses fill you ? 
Shall you not say two things : First, here is something 
new, original, and strange, — another apparition on the 
earth, another history commenced, different from any 
that the world has ever seen. That fills you with the 
fresh delight of newness. Curiosity, inspiration, exal- 



Identity and Variety. 



67 



tation fill your heart. But you say also, Lo, the old 
life-spirit once more utters itself. Lo, that which has 
been is once again. The tree puts forth another bud. 
The chain builds on another link. That fills you with 
the peaceful sense of permanence, and lets you feel the 
whole humanity and the God of humanity holding this 
infant life. In the union of these two emotions lies 
the best fitness for the wisest work that you can do in 
training this new immortal. 

I leave the statement and illustration of our truth, 
and turn now in what time remains to point out very 
plainly what its consequences are, what sort of life and 
conduct it will make in him who understands it and 
accepts it as his law. 

First of all, it will make self-respect. Here are you, 
seemingly insignificant, not making much of yourself, 
not seeming to be worthy to be made much of. Oh, if 
you could know two things about yourself : First, that you 
are a different creature from any that the world has ever 
seen ; and second, that you are a true utterance of the 
same Spirit of Life out of which sprang Isaiah and Saint 
John. Indeed, there must come self-respect from both 
those truths together, wrought and kneadedTLnto the very 
substance of a human nature. It is some glimpse of them 
which makes the school-boy idling at his desk on some 
inspired morning gather up his books and go to work. 
It is some glimmer of these in his poor dark soul that 
gives the slave the power to look boldly in his eye the 
master who is flogging him and keep his heart untamed. 
It is the simple certainty of these that makes it easy 
for the laborer who digs your ditch not to be bullied b^ 



C8 Identity and Variety. 

your arrogant wealth, but to do his task perfectly, and 
report it, past your arrogant patronage or fault-finding, 
to God. Every act has its appropriate glory, its per- 
fect and entire way of being done. To do any act in 
its perfect way is a perfect act. The star is not a lit- 
tle sun ; it is a star. It is not a fragment broken off 
from the great orb and shining with a broken, fragmen- 
tary lustre ; it is a thing by itself. It has its own way 
of shining, which the sun itself cannot invade. There 
is one glory of the sun and another glory of the star. 
To shine itself out boldly in the heavens is to do a new, 
distinct thing which makes the heavens rich. 

I would that I could make this clear to some dis 
turbed and discontented soul which is here this morn 
ing. You are a star and not a sun. God forbid that i: 
you really are a sun and not a star any arbitrary com 
pulsion should keep you in the star's place and shut 
you out of the sun's. We must labor everywhere till 
there is perfect freedom for every nature to know and 
be itself. But you do know yourself. You are a star 
and not a sun. Your place in life is not in the fore- 
front of things ; it is subordinate and secondary. What 
then ? Can you learn this truth, — that if you do your 
work with complete faithfulness and with the most abso- 
lute perfectness with which it is capable of being done, 
you are making just as genuine a contribution to the 
substance of the universal good as is the most brillant 
worker whom the world contains ? You are setting as 
true a fact here between the eternities as he. You are 
doing what he cannot do. It is Emerson's fable of the 
Mountain and the Squirrel, — 



Identity and Variety. 



69 



" If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
Neither can you crack a nut." 

"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of 
the stars." 

All our works, even the greatest, are so little in rela- 
tion to the world's need; all our works, even the least, 
are so great in relation to the doer's faithfulness. 
There is the secret of self-respect. Oh, go take up your 
work and do it. Do it with cheerfulness and love. So 
shall you shine with a glory which is all your own, — 
a glory which the great heaven of universal life would 
be poorer for missing. 

You see how inevitably respect for others is bound 
up with such self-respect as this. Let us turn and think 
of that. The absorbing character of a great enthusi- 
asm is one of the commonest of observations. He who 
cares earnestly for anything is apt to care very little 
for other things, and is apt to wonder and be indignant 
that other people do not care as much as he does for the 
thing he cares for. How the philanthropist, all eager 
to set right the world's tumultuous wrongs, chafes and 
grows furious at the sight of the recluse or scholar sit- 
ting in his cell, raking over the ashes of history or 
dreaming of the sacred elementary and abstract truths ! 
Then how that scholar, if he looks abroad, is ready to 
despise the bustling restlessness which is forever or- 
ganizing committees and petitioning legislatures and 
screwing up the loosened machinery of charity ! " There 
is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, 
and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth 
from another star in glory, " — is not that the very truth 



70 



Identity and Variety. 



which such despisers of their brethren need to under- 
stand ? Sometimes it seems as if such narrowness were 
necessary, — as if it were the inevitable price which you 
must pay for earnestness and energy; but surely that 
cannot be so, surely it must be possible for men to be 
profoundly devoted to their own work and yet to be pro- 
foundly thankful for the work which other men are do- 
ing, — work which they could not do, and whose details 
and methods it is not in their natures to understand and 
care for. Surely I may claim my right to be glad and 
proud that the great singers are singing, though my 
ears are dull to music ; and that the great sculptors are 
carving, even if my soul does not respond to art; and 
that the great statesmen are ruling, though my quiet life 
seems to be lived entirely outside the region of their 
grand ideas. They are all mine, and I am theirs. 

Is this a fancy ? Is it a mere blind struggle to en- 
large my life, whose littleness makes it intolerable ? 
Not if I genuinely believe in God ! If I feel Him be- 
hind all existence, then there is a great identity estab- 
lished between all the utterances of Him throughout 
the length and breadth of human life. The volcanoes 
know each other, — Etna crying out to Vesuvius across 
the sea, — because of the oneness of the central fire 
from which they all proceed. Let me know God, the 
source of all that man does anywhere, and then, 0 
poet, sing your song! 0 sculptor, carve your statue! 
0 builder, build your house! 0 engineer, roll out 
your railroad on the plain! 0 sailor, sail your ship 
across the sea ! They are all mine. I am glad ; I am 
proud of them all. Is it not what Paul wrote so trium- 



Identity and Variety. 



71 



phantly to his disciples, — " All things are yours, and 
you are Christ's, and Christ is God's " ? And then 
that everything should reach its best, that every man 
should do his best in his own line, that every star 
should shine brightly with its own light, becomes the 
wish and prayer and purpose of my life. Here is the 
only true respect for fellow-man. 

All this applies to the different conditions and degrees 
in which we see other men's lives to stand ; but it may 
also be made to apply to the different conditions and 
degrees into which we may think of our lives as passing. 
You or I are this to-day ; to morrow or next year we 
may be something quite different. To-day we are in- 
significant ; to-morrow or next year we may be illustri- 
ous and prominent. Or just the opposite — to-day we 
are illustrious and prominent, to-morrow or next year 
we may be insignificant. How shall we look upon those 
possibilities of change ? Is not this what we want ? To 
see each condition as a distinct thing with its own 
values and meanings, and yet to feel how our human life 
may, still the same that it is now, spread itself out and 
come to larger things. This harmonizes contentment 
in the present with large-hearted aspiration after greater 
fortunes. Let the student honor his studentship. Let 
him live in it as in a home thoroughly honorable and 
worthy. Let him think of it, not as a road over which 
he is compelled to travel, but as a dwelling in which 
he has the privilege of living; but let him realize him- 
self in it so truly that whatever else he may be capable 
of doing in the coming years may seem to him not hope- 
less while he looks forward to it, and not strange or un- 



72 



Identity and Variety. 



natural when it arrives. He who lives so, lives in a 
present peace which the large hopes of the future dc 
not disturb, but deepen. 

And so at the end as at the beginning of my sermon 
I touch the use which Saint Paul first made of this truth 
which we have taken from him for our study. To him 
it was a proof of immortality. He would have men live 
here on earth, yet conscious of their capacity of Heaven. 
He would have earth real, clear, definite, distinct, 
shining with its own color, holding us with its own 
grasp ; and yet he would have man so conscious of his 
larger self that the very definiteness of what he is to- 
day makes real to him the greater thing that he will be 
in the vast world beyond. 

Is not that what we want ? The life of earth now, 
the life of heaven by and by, — each clear with its 
own glory ! And our humanity capable of both, capable 
of sharp thinking, timely hard work here and now, ca- 
pable also of the supernal, the transcendent splendor 
there when the time shall come ! The glory of the star, 
the glory of the sun ! We must not lose either in the 
other; we must not be so full of the hope of heaven 
that we cannot do our work on earth; we must not 
be so lost in the work of earth that we shall not be in- 
spired by the hope of heaven. God grant us all the 
contentment and the hope which come to those whc 
live in Him who covers all yesterday, to-day, and for- 
ever with Himself. 



V. 



THE SERIOUSNESS OF LIFE. 

Let not God speak to us, lest we die. — Ex. xx. 19. 

The Hebrews had come up out of Egypt, and were 
standing in front of Sinai. The mountain was full of 
fire and smoke. Thunderings and voices were bursting 
from its mysterious awfulness. Great trumpet-blasts 
came pealing through the frightened air. Everything 
bore witness to the presence of God. The Hebrews 
were appalled and frightened. We can see them cower- 
ing and trembling. They turn to Moses and beg him 
to stand between them and God. " Speak thou with 
us, and we will hear ; but let not God speak to us, lest 
we die." 

At first it seems as if their feeling were a strange 
one. This is their God who is speaking to them, their 
God who brought them " out of the Land of Egypt, out 
of the House of Bondage. " Would it not seem as if 
they would be glad to have Him come to them directly, 
to have Him almost look on them with eyes that they 
could see, and make unnecessary the interposition of 
His servant Moses, bringing them messages from Him ? 
Will they not feel their whole history of rescue coming 
to its consummation when at last they find themselves 



74 



The Seriousness of Life, 



actually in the presence of the God who has delivered 
them, and hear His voice ? 

That is the first question, but very speedily we feel 
how natural that is which actually did take place. The 
Hebrews had delighted in God's mercy. They had 
come singing up out of the Ked Sea. They had fol- 
lowed the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud. They 
had accepted God's provision for their hunger. They 
had received Moses, whom God had made their leader. 
But now they were called on to face God Himself. In 
behind all the superficial aspects of their life they were 
called on to get at its centre and its heart. In behind 
the happy results, they were summoned to deal with the 
mysterious and mighty cause. There they recoiled. 
" Nay, " they said, " let us go on as we are. Let life 
not become so terrible and solemn. We are willing 
to know that God is there. We are willing, we are 
glad, that Moses should go into His presence and bring 
us His messages. But we will not come in sight of 
Him ourselves. Life would be awful. Life would be 
unbearable. Let not God speak with us, lest we die ! " 

I want to bid you think this morning how natural and 
how common such a temper is. There are a few people 
among us who are always full of fear that life will be- 
come too trivial and petty. There are always a great 
many people who live in perpetual anxiety lest life 
shall become too awful and serious and deep and sol- 
emn. There is something in all of us which feels that 
fear. We are always hiding behind effects to keep out 
of sight of their causes, behind events to keep out of 
sight of their meanings, behind facts to keep out of 



The Seriousness of Life. 



75 



sight of principles, behind men to keep out of the sight 
of God. Because that is such poor economy; because 
the only real safety and happiness of life comes from 
looking down bravely into its depths when they are 
opened to us, and fairly taking into account the pro- 
foundest meanings of existence ; because not death but 
life, the fullest and completest life, comes from letting 
God speak to us and earnestly listening while He 
speaks, — for these reasons I think this verse will have 
something to say to us which it will be good for us 
to hear. 

We have all known men from whom it seemed as if 
it would be good to lift away some of the burden of life, 
to make the world seem easier and less serious. Some 
such people perhaps we know to-day; but as we look 
abroad generally do we not feel sure that such people 
are the exceptions ? The great mass of people are 
stunted and starved with superficialness. They never 
get beneath the crust and skin of the things with which 
they deal. They never touch the real reasons and mean- 
ings of living. They turn and hide their faces, or else 
run away when those profoundest things present them- 
selves. They will not let God speak with them. So 
all their lives lack tone; nothing brave, enterprising, 
or aspiring is in them. Do you not know it well ? Do 
you not feel it everywhere ? 

For we may lay it down as a first principle that he 
who uses superficially any power or any person which 
he is capable of using profoundly gets harm out of that 
unaccepted opportunity which he lets slip. You talk 
with some slight acquaintance, some man of small 



76 



The Seriousness of Life. 



capacity and little depth, about ordinary things in very 
ordinary fashion ; and you do not suffer for it. You get 
all that he has to give. But you hold constant inter- 
course with some deep nature, some man of great 
thoughts and true spiritual standards, and you insist 
on dealing merely with the surface of him, touching 
him only at the most trivial points of living, and you 
do get harm. The unused capacity of the man — all 
which he might be to you, but which you are refusing 
to let him be — is always there, demoralizing you. If 
you knew that a boy would absolutely and utterly shut 
his nature up against the high influences of the best 
men, would you not think it good for him to live not 
with them but with men of inferior degree, in whom he 
should not be always rejecting possibilities which he 
ought to take ? A dog might live with a wise man, and 
remaining still a dog, be all the better for the wise 
man's wisdom, which he never rejected because he could 
not accept it. But a brutish man who lived with the 
sage and insisted that he would be still a brute, would 
become all the more brutish by reason of the despised 
and neglected wisdom. 

Now we have only to apply this principle to life and 
we have the philosophy and meaning of what I want tc 
preach to you this morning. It is possible to conceive 
of a world which should offer the material and opportu- 
nity of nothing but superficialness, — nothing but the 
making of money and the eating of bread and the playing 
of games ; and in that world a man might live superfi- 
cially and get no harm. On the other hand it is possible 
to conceive of a man who had no capacity for anything 



The Seriousness of Life. 



77 



but superficialness and frivolity and dealing with sec- 
ond causes ; and that man might live superficially even 
in this deep, rich world in which we live, and get no 
harm. But — here is the point — for this man with 
his capacities to live in this world with its oppor- 
tunities and yet to live on its surface and to refuse its 
depths, to turn away from its problems, to reject the 
voice of God that speaks out of it, is a demoralizing 
and degrading thing. It mortifies the unused pow- 
ers, and keeps the man always a traitor to his privi- 
leges and his duties. 

Take one part of life and you can see it very plainly. 
Take the part with which we are familiar here in church. 
Take the religious life of man. True religion is, at 
its soul, spiritual sympathy with, spiritual obedience 
to God. But religion has its superficial aspects, — first 
of truth to be proved and accepted, and then, still more 
superficial, of forms to be practised and obeyed. Now 
suppose that a man setting out to be religious confines 
himself to these superficial regions and refuses to go 
further down. He learns his creed and says it. He 
rehearses his ceremony and practises it. The deeper 
voice of his religion cries to him from its unsounded 
depths, " Come, understand your soul ! Come, through 
repentance enter into holiness ! Come, hear the voice 
of God. " But he draws back ; he piles between him- 
self and that importunate invitation the cushions of his 
dogma and his ceremony. "Let God's voice come to 
me deadened and softened through these," he says. 
" Let not God speak to me, lest I die. Speak thou to 
toe and I will hear. " So he cries to his priest, to his 



78 



The Seriousness of Life. 



sacrament, which is his Moses. Is he not harmed by 
that ? Is it only that he loses the deeper spiritual power 
which he might have had ? Is it not also that the fact 
of its being there and of his refusing to take it makes 
his life unreal, fills it with a suspicion of cowardice, 
and puts it on its guard lest at any time this ocean of 
spiritual life which has been shut out should burst 
through the barriers which exclude it and come pouring 
in ? Suppose the opposite. Suppose the soul so sum- 
moned accepts the fulness of its life. It opens its ears 
and cries, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. " It 
invites the infinite and eternal aspects of life to show 
themselves. Thankful to Moses for his faithful leader- 
ship, it is always pressing through him to the God for 
whom he speaks. Thankful to priest and church and 
dogma, it will always live in the truth of its direct, 
immediate relationship to God, and make them minis- 
ter to that. What a consciousness of thoroughness and 
safety; what a certain, strong sense of resting on the 
foundation of all things is there then! There are no 
closed, ignored rooms of the universe out of which un- 
expected winds may blow, full of dismay. The sky is 
clear above us, though we have not soared to its farth- 
est height. The ocean is broad before us, though we 
have not sailed through all its breadth. 

Oh, my dear friends, do not let your religion satisfy 
itself with anything less than God. Insist on having 
your soul get at Him and hear His voice. Never, be- 
cause of the mystery, the awe, perhaps the perplexity 
and doubt which come with the great experiences, let 
yourself take refuge in the superficial things of faith. 



The Seriousness of Life. 



79 



It is better to be lost on the ocean than to be tied to the 
shore. It is better to be overwhelmed with the great- 
ness of hearing the awful voice of God than to become 
satisfied with the piping of mechanical ceremonies or 
the lullabies of traditional creeds. Therefore seek 
great experiences of the soul, and never turn your back 
on them when God sends them, as He surely will ! 

The whole world of thought is full of the same neces 
sity and the same danger. A man sets himself to think 
of this world we live in. He discovers facts. He ar- 
ranges facts into what he calls laws. Behind his laws 
he feels and owns the powers to which he gives the 
name of force. There he sets his feet. He will go no 
further. He dimly hears the depth below, of final 
causes, of personal purposes, roaring as the great ocean 
roars under the steamship which, with its clamorous 
machineries and its precious freight of life, goes sailing 
on the ocean's bosom. You say to him, "Take this 
into your account. Your laws are beautiful, your 
force is gracious and sublime. But neither is ultimate. 
You have not reached the end and source of things in 
these. Go further. Let God speak to you. " Can you 
not hear the answer ? " Nay, that perplexes all things. 
That throws confusion into what we have made plain 
and orderly and clear. Let not God speak to us, lest 
we die ! " You think what the study of Nature might 
become, if, keeping every accurate and careful method 
of investigation of the way in which the universe is gov- 
erned and arranged, it yet was always hearing, always 
rejoicing to hear, behind all methods and governments 
and machineries, the sacred movement of the personal 



80 



TJie Seriousness of Life. 



will and nature which is the soul of all. Whether we 
call such hearing science or poetry, it matters not. If 
we call it poetry, we are only asserting the poetic issue 
of all science. If we call it science, we are only de- 
claring that poetry is not fiction but the completest 
truth. The two unite in religion, which when it has 
its full chance to do all its work shall bring poetry and 
science together in the presence of a recognized God, 
whom the student then shall not shrink from, but de- 
light to know, and find in Him the illumination and the 
harmony of all his knowledge. 

The same is true about all motive. How men shrink 
from the profoundest motives ! How they will pretend 
that they are doing things for slight and superficial rea- 
sons when really the sources of their actions are in the 
most eternal principles of things, in the very being of 
God Himself. I stop you and ask you why you give 
that poor man a dollar, and you give me some account 
of how his poverty offends your taste, of how unpleasant 
it is to behold him starve. I ask you why you toil at 
your business day in and day out, year after year. I 
beg you to tell me why you devote yourself to study, and 
you reply with certain statements about the attractive- 
ness of study and the way in which every extension or 
increase of knowledge makes the world more rich. All 
that is true, but it is slight. It keeps the world thin. 
This refusal to trace any act back more than an inch 
into that world of motive out of which all acts spring, 
this refusal especially to let acts root themselves in Him 
who is the one only really worthy cause why anything 
should be done at all, — this is what makes life grow so 



The Seriousness of Life. 



81 



thin to the feeling of men who live it; this is what 
makes men wonder sometimes that their brethren can 
find it worth while to keep on working and living, even 
while they themselves keep on at their life and work in 
the same way. This is the reason why men very often 
fear that the impulse of life may give out before the 
time comes to die, and shudder as they think how awful 
it will be to go on living with the object and the zest of 
life all dead. Such a fear never could come for a mo- 
ment to the man who felt the fountain of God's infinite 
being behind all that the least of God's children did 
for love of Him. 

I know very well how all this which I have under- 
taken to preach this morning may easily be distorted 
and misunderstood. It may seem to be the setting 
forth of a sensational and unnatural idea of life, the 
struggle after which will only result in a histrionic 
self-consciousness, a restless, discontented passion for 
making life seem intense and awful, when it is really 
commonplace and tame. "Let us be quiet and natu- 
ral, " men say, " and all will be well. " But the truth 
is that to be natural is to feel the seriousness and 
depth of life, and that no man does come to any worthy 
quietness who does not find God and rest on Him and 
talk with Him continually. The contortions of the sen- 
sationalist must not blind us to the real truth of that 
which he grotesquely parodies. His blunder is not in 
thinking that life is earnest, but in trying to realize its 
earnestness by stirring up its surface into foam instead 
of piercing down into its depths, where all is calm. Yet 
even he, grotesque and dreadful as he is, seems almost 

€ 



82 



The Seriousness of Life. 



better than the imperturbably complacent soul who re- 
fuses to believe that life is serious at all. 

The whole trouble comes from a wilful or a blind 
underestimate of man. " Let not God speak to me, lest 
I die," the man exclaims. Is it not almost as if the 
fish cried, "Cast me not into the water, lest I drown," 
or as if the eagle said, " Let not the sun shine on me, 
lest I be blind. " It is man fearing his native element. 
He was made to talk with God. It is not death, but his 
true life, to come into the divine society and to take his 
thoughts, his standards, and his motives directly out 
of the hand of the eternal perfectness. Man does not 
know his own vitality, and so he nurses a little quiver 
of flame and keeps the draught away from it, when if 
he would only trust it and throw it bravely out into the 
wind, where it belongs, it would blaze into the true fire 
it was made to be. We find a revelation of this in all 
the deepest and highest moments of our lives. Have 
you not often been surprised by seeing how men who 
seemed to have no capacity for such experiences passed 
into a sense of divine companionship when anything 
disturbed their lives with supreme joy or sorrow ? 
Once or twice, at least, in his own life, almost every 
one of us has found himself face to face with God, and 
felt how natural it was to be there. Then all interpre- 
ters and agencies of Him have passed away. He has 
looked in on us directly ; we have looked immediately 
upon Him ; and we have not died, — we have supremely 
lived. We have known that we never had so lived as 
then. We have been aware how natural was that direct 
sympathy and union and communication with God. 



The Seriousness of Life. 



83 



And often the question has come, "What possible rea- 
son is there why this should not be the habit and fixed 
condition of our life ? Why should we ever go back 
from it ? " And then, as we felt ourselves going back 
from it, we have been aware that we were growing un- 
natural again ; we were leaving the heights, where our 
souls breathed their truest air, and going down into the 
valleys, where only long habit and an educated distrust 
of our own high capacity had made us feel ourselves 
more thoroughly at home. 

And as this is the revelation of the highest mo- 
ments of every life, so it is the revelation of the 
highest lives; especially it is the revelation of the 
highest of all lives, the life of Christ. Men had been 
saying, " Let not God speak to us, lest we die ; " and 
here came Christ, the man, — Jesus, the man; and 
God spoke with Him constantly, and yet He lived with 
the most complete vitality. He was the livest of all 
living men. God spoke with Him continually. He 
never did a deed, He never thought a thought, that He 
did not carry it back with His soul before it took its 
final shape and get His Father's judgment on it. He 
lifted His eyes at any instant and talked through the 
open sky, and on the winds came back to Him the an- 
swer. He talked with Pilate and with Peter, with 
Herod and with John ; and yet his talk with them was 
silence ; it did not begin to make His life, to be His 
life, compared with that perpetual communion with His 
Father which made the fundamental consciousness as it 
made the unbroken habit of, His life. All this is true 
of J esus. You who know tl^e rich story of the Gospels 



84 



The Seriousness of Life. 



know how absolutely it is true of Him. And the strange 
thing about it is that the life of which all this is true is 
felt at once to be the most natural, the most living life 
which the world has ever seen. Imagine Jesus saying 
those words which the Hebrews said: "Let not God 
speak to me, lest I die. " You cannot put those words 
upon His lips. They will not stay there. "0 God, 
speak to me, that I may live, " — that is the prayer with 
which He comes out of the stifling air of the synagogue 
or the temple, out of the half-death of the mercenary 
streets, out of the foolish rivalries and quarrellings of 
His disciples. 

And every now and then a great man or woman comes 
who is like Christ in this. There comes a man who 
naturally drinks of the fountain and eats of the es- 
sential bread of life. Where you deal with the mere 
borders of things he gets at their hearts; where you 
ask counsel of expediencies, he talks with first princi- 
ples; where you say, "This will be profitable," he says, 
" This is right. " Remember I am talking about him 
now only with reference to this one thing, — that when 
men see him they recognize at once that it is from 
abundance and not from defect of vitality that this man 
lives among the things which are divine. Is there one 
such man — it may be one such boy — in the store 
where all the rest of you are working for rivalry or ava- 
rice ? Is there one who works from principle, one who 
works for God; and will you tell me whether you do 
not all count him the most genuinely living of you all ? 

The student of history knows very well that there are 
certain ages and certain races which more than other 



The Seriousness of Life. 



85 



ages seem to have got down to the fundamental facts, 
and to be living by the elemental and eternal forces, — 
ages and races which are always speaking with God. 
So we all feel about the Hebrews. The divine voice 
was always in their ears. Often they misunderstood it. 
Often they thought they heard it when it was only the 
echo of their own thoughts and wishes that they heard ; 
but the desire to hear it, the sense that life consisted in 
hearing it, — that never left them. And so, too, we feel, 
or ought to feel, about the great Hebrew period of our 
own race, the Puritan century, in which everything 
was probed to the bottom, all delegated authorities were 
questioned, and earnestness everywhere insisted upon 
oaving to do immediately with God. Plenty of crude, 
t^ross, almost blasphemous developments of this insist- 
ence set themselves forth ; but the fact of the insistence 
v^as and still is most impressive. It never frightened 
the Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to 
the speech of God. His closet and his church were full 
of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful 
voice for which he listened. He made little, too little, 
of sacraments and priests, because God was so intensely 
real to him. What should he do with lenses who stood 
thus full in the torrent of the sunshine ? And so the 
thing which makes the history of the Puritans so im- 
pressive is the sense that in them we come close to the 
great first things. We are back behind the temporary, 
special forms of living, on the bosom of the primitive 
eternal life itself. 

When we turn suddenly from their time to our own 
time what a difference there is ! At least what a 



86 



The Seriousness of Life. 



difference there is between all their time and a part 
of ours. For our time is not capable of being charac- 
terized as generally and absolutely as theirs. It has 
many elements. Certainly it Las much of Puritanism, 
The age which has had Carlyle for its prophet, and 
which has fought out our war against slavery has not 
lost its Puritanism. But the other side of our life, 
how far it is from the first facts of life, from God, who 
is behind and below everything ! When I listen to our 
morals finding their sufficient warrant and only recog- 
nized authority in expediency ; when I behold our poli- 
tics abandoning all ideal conceptions of the nation's life 
and talking as if it were only a great mercantile estab- 
lishment, of which the best which we can ask is that it 
should be honestly run ; when I see society conceiving 
no higher purpose for its activities than amusement; 
when I catch the tone of literature, of poetry, and of 
romance, abandoning large themes, studiously and de- 
liberately giving up principles and all heroic life, and 
making itself the servant and record of what is most 
sordid and familiar, sometimes even of what is most 
uncomely and unclean; when I think of art grown 
seemingly incapable of any high endeavor ; when I con- 
sider how many of our brightest men have written the 
word Agnostic on their banner, as if not to know any- 
thing, or to consider anything incapable of being known, 
were a condition to shout over and not to mourn over, — 
when I see all these things, and catch the spirit of the 
time of which these things are but the exhibitions and 
the symptoms, I cannot help feeling as if out of this 
side, at least, of our time there came something very 



The Seriousness of Life. 



87 



like the echoes of the old Hebrew cry, " Let not God 
speak to us, lest we die. " We are afraid of getting to 
the roots of things, where God abides. What bulwarks 
have you, rich, luxurious men, built up between your- 
selves and the poverty in which hosts of your brethren 
are living ? What do you know, what do you want to 
know, of the real life of J esus, who was so poor, so radi- 
cal, so full of the sense of everything just as it is in 
God ? You tremble at the changes which are evidently 
coming. You ask yourself, How many of these first 
things, these fundamental things, are going to be dis- 
turbed ? Are property and rank and social precedence 
and the relation of class to class going to be over- 
turned ? Oh, you have got to learn that these are not 
the first things, these are not the fundamental things ! 
Behind these things stand justice and mercy. Behind 
everything stands God. He must speak to you. He 
will speak to you. Oh, do not try to shut out His 
voice. Listen to Him that you may live. Be ready for 
any overturnings, even of the things which have seemed 
to you most eternal, if by them He can come to be 
more the King of His own earth. 

And in religion, may I not beg you to be vastly more 
radical and thorough ? Do not avoid, but seek, the 
great, deep, simple things of faith. Religious people 
read thin, superficial books of religious sentiment, but 
do not meet face to face the strong, exacting, masculine 
pages of their Bibles. They live in the surface ques- 
tions about how the Church is constituted, how it ought 
to be governed, what the forms of worship ought to be. 
They shrink from the profound and awful problems of 



88 



The Seriousness of Life. 



the soul's salvation by the Son of God and preparation 
for eternity. Do we not hear — strangest of all! — in 
religion, which means the soul's relationship to God, 
do we not hear there — strangest of all — the soul's 
frightened cry, " Let not God speak with me, lest I die" ? 
In all your personal life, my friends, it is more thor- 
oughness and depth that you need in order to get the 
peace which if you spoke the truth you would own that 
you so wofully lack. You are in God's world; you 
are God's child. Those things you cannot change; the 
only peace and rest and happiness for you is to accept 
them and rejoice in them. "When God speaks to you 
you must not make believe to yourself that it is the 
wind blowing or the torrent falling from the hill. You 
must know that it is God. You must gather up the 
whole power of meeting Him. You must be thankful 
that life is great and not little. You must listen as if 
listening were your life. And then, then only, can 
come peace. All other sounds will be caught up into 
the prevailing richness of that voice of God. The lost 
proportions will be perfectly restored. Discord will 
cease ; harmony will be complete. 

I beg you who are young to think of what I have said 
to you to-day. Set the thought of life high at the be- 
ginning. Expect God to speak to you. Do not dream 
of turning your back on the richness and solemnity of 
living. Then there will come to you the happiness 
which came to Jesus. You, like Him, shall live, not 
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out 
of the mouth of God ! 



VI. 



THE CHOICE YOUNG MAN. 

Saul, a choice young man. — 1 Sam. ix. 2. 

Saul is as true a character of the Old Testament as 
his namesake, who is by and by called Paul, is of the 
New. He is full of the spirit of the morning. He is 
eager and incomplete. He attracts and disappoints us. 
He is a mixture of loyalty and disobedience. He ex- 
cites great hopes, and dies in tragical failure. He 
makes ready the way for something better than him- 
self. He is the true Old Testament man. 

But it is not of him that I want to speak to-day. It 
is simply of that striking phrase in which he is de- 
scribed. "A choice young man," so he is called. It 
is the general description of a being in whom we are 
all interested, who is supremely interested in himself, 
and yet who has an element of mystery, and excites our 
curiosity as well as our interest. Let us ask ourselves 
this morning what are the characteristics of the choice 
young man. 

The " choice " of anything signifies the best example 
of that thing. The word involves the idea not of ex- 
ceptionalness but of representativeness. The choice 
fruit of the tree is the tree's best fruit; it is that in 
which the tree's juices have had their most unhindered 



90 



The Choice Young Man. 



way, and made the best which that tree was capable of 
making. The choice work of art is the freest embodi- 
ment of the artistic spirit, the thing in which beautiful 
thought and beautiful work and beautiful material have 
done their best. The choice man is the best specimen of 
humanity, the human being in whom there is least that 
is inhuman or unhuman, and in whom the truly human 
qualities are most complete. In every case there is a 
ruling out of what is exceptional, and a fulfilling of 
what is essential. The choice thing is the true thing. 

So is it with the choice young man. He is the 
true young man. He is the human creature in whom 
the best material of the world, which is manhood, ex- 
ists in its best condition, which is youth; or if I am 
wrong in calling youth the best condition, at least it 
is a condition which has excellences and fascinations 
which are wholly its own. The great point of the 
phrase is this, — that it denotes not an exception but a 
true condition of human life. The choice young man 
is the man in whom are uttered the normal character- 
istics of young manhood ; and so he invites our study, 
not as a strange phenomenon, but as a revelation in pe- 
culiarly perfect, and therefore peculiarly distinct, dis- 
play of a nature with which we are familiar, and which 
we everywhere desire to understand. 

The charm of young human life is felt everywhere, 
and through all special conditions which give it its 
variety of local color. It belongs to no nation and no 
age. The young Roman, the young Greek, the young 
Arab, the young Englishman, the young American, as 
well as the joung Jew, excite at once the imagination 



The Choice Young Man. 



91 



and the admiration of the world. Indeed in the fresh- 
ness of life is felt the unity of life ; and youth is one 
throughout the world and throughout history as older 
life never is. And it would seem to be man's pure 
delight in his humanity which, previous to all analysis 
or careful enumeration of the qualities which make it 
beautiful, compels from all mankind a glory and de- 
light in the young of its own kind. "Here is pure 
man," he says, "unmixed, untainted. It is crude in- 
deed, it is unfinished; but that is man, that is his 
glory. The finished man is not man. It is a contra- 
diction of terms." And so before we ask ourselves 
what it is that is admirable about him, we admire and 
are inspired by the young man as we admire and are 
inspired by the morning and the spring-time. 

When, however, we go on, as we must, to ask, beyond 
this general consciousness of admiration, what it is 
which we admire in young manhood, our answer must 
be found, I think, in the way in which the true human 
life always begins with its circumference, as it were, 
complete, and then fills in its space with its details. 
It starts with large conceptions, great desires, enthu- 
siastic notions of what man may be, and it is the fact 
of these, suggested by and present in the young man's 
life, which makes the immediate attraction of a gen- 
erous young manhood. 

It might have been just the opposite. Life might 
have been made to begin with some one point and 
slowly widen out from that point until its complete- 
ness were attained. Prudently adding one well-tried 
conception to another, making successive unexpected 



92 



The Choice Young Man. 



discoveries about itself, the nature might have only 
come by slow degrees to realize its own greatness and 
mysterious dignity. As it is, it leaps at once to this 
completeness of itself ; it is exuberant at the beginning ; 
it does not distrust the world and only gradually learn 
that the world is worthy of its trust ; it trusts the world 
outright, and lets all stingy questionings come afterward. 
Life seems so good that it is satisfied with its own nor- 
mal exercises and emotions, and does not seek additions 
in artificial stimulants. It bears everlasting witness 
that the good is deepest and most original in human 
life, by believing in it first, and only slowly recognizing 
the presence and power of the evil. 

Now here is a distinct quality in human youth, be- 
longing to a distinct truth concerning the life of man. 
If it is so, then we have reached our first idea about 
the choice young man. In him this quality of human 
youth will be most bright and clear. He will be most 
possessed with the sense of the sufficiency of life, and 
most eager to preserve its purity because of the com- 
pleteness which he feels in it. 

This is the true motive of the best young man's de- 
sire for purity. It is not fear. The wise men gather 
round him and say, " You must not sin. You must not 
be licentious ; you will suffer if you do. You must re- 
strain your passions; you will suffer if you do not." 
It is good for him to hear their voices ; it is good for 
him in his weaker moments to be told how God has 
emphasized the good of every goodness by the penalty 
which he has attached to every wickedness. But alas 
for every young man if these fears are the safeguards 



The Choice Young Man. 93 

upon which his soul habitually and finally relies to 
keep him pure. There is nothing choice about a vir- 
tue such as that. Alas for you, young men, if there is 
no such conception in you of the essential sacredness 
of life as shall make every natural process and experi- 
ence beautiful, and just in proportion shall make every 
unnatural action first of all an impossibility, and then, 
when in some baser moment it seems possible, make 
it a horror. This is the young man's true purity, — 
first, a divine unconsciousness and incapacity; and 
then, when that is no longer possible, a divine hate of 
impurity. How absolutely such a truth quarrels with 
all the abominable doctrines which would make us be- 
lieve that a youth must wade its filthy way through the 
depths of iniquity up to the heights of a wasted and 
withered continence ! Not so ; life, the true life, the 
choice life, begins upon the mountains. As the morn- 
ing mists scatter, it sees the gulfs it did not see at 
first ; but it has no natural necessity to plunge into them 
when they are seen. And the true power of its conti- 
nence is not the horror of the gulf, but the abundance 
and glory of the pure hill-top where the young feet 
stand. 

All this does not apply only to those things which 
are absolutely and manifestly vicious, to wanton licen= 
tiousness and reckless sin; it applies to all the acci- 
dents of life. It is a bad sight for the eyes to see when 
a young man has come prematurely into the power of 
those accidents, when he cannot find life abundant 
without what we call the " comforts of life, " even those 
which have no vicious element about them. What busi- 



94 



The Choice Young Man. 



ness has the young vigor of twenty to demand that the 
fire shall be warm and the seat cushioned and the road 
smooth ? Let him not parade his incompetence for life 
by insisting that life is not worth living unless a man 
is rich, — unless, that is, the abundance of life should 
be eked out with wealth, which is an accident of life, 
not of its essence. Let him not insult himself by be- 
having as if the sunshine or the shower made a differ- 
ence to him. Let those poor slaveries wait till the heart 
is soured and the knees are weak. No ! the young man's 
place is to scorn delights. We will tolerate any folly 
of exuberant vitality which vents itself in over-scorn ; 
but the other folly is unnatural and base. Our gilded 
youth are not — and they ought to know that they are 
not; they ought to be told that they are not — choice 
young men when the study of their life is to spare them- 
selves pain and surround themselves with creature com- 
forts. It is a sign that they have not got hold of the 
sufficiency of life. They do not know what pure gold 
it is, and so they try to eke it out with gilding. Good 
is it when their better human nature breaks through 
sometimes, and in the rough life of the wilderness or 
the sea, sought by whatever artificial means, demands 
its right to rejoice in the simplicity of living, in the 
privations which mean the close, uncushioned contact 
with life. Sad is it when a community grows more 
and more to abound in young men who worship wealth 
and think they cannot live without luxury and physical 
comfort. The choicest of its strength is gone. 

The same principle, that life in the young man should 
be abundant in itself, would find still broader applica- 



The Choice Young Man. 



95 



tion in every relation of human action. It would bring 
simplicity and healthiness in every standard. It would 
rule out and cast aside as impertinent and offensive all 
that was artificial and untrue. How clear it makes the 
whole question of the way in which money is to be gained 
or given ! And so it brings us at once to another practi- 
cal question of young men's life. Money to the simple, 
healthy human sense is but the representative of energy 
and power. It is to pass from man to man only as the 
symbol of some exertion, some worthy outputting of 
strength and life. Save in the way of charity, it is not 
to be given or taken without something behind it which 
it represents. With his mind full of this simple, hon- 
est truth, feeling himself ready to earn his living and 
to give an equivalent for all that he receives, the young 
man ought to have an instinctive dislike and scorn for 
all transactions which would substitute feeble chance 
for vigorous desert, and make him either the giver or 
receiver of that which has not even the show of an 
equivalent or earning. I do not say that gambling and 
betting are admirable or respectable things in gray- 
haired men. It is not of them or to them that I am 
speaking now. I do say that in young men, with the 
abundance of life within them and around them, gam- 
bling and betting, if they be not the result of merest 
thoughtlessness, are signs of a premature demoraliza- 
tion which hardly any other vice can show. In social 
life, in club, in college, on the street, the willingness 
of young men to give or to receive money on the mere 
turn of chance is a token of the decay of manliness and 
self-respect which is more alarming than almost any- 



96 



The Choice Young Man. 



thing besides. It has an inherent baseness about it 
which not to feel shows a base soul. To cany in your 
pocket money which has become yours by no use of 
your manly powers, which has ceased to be another 
man's by no willing acceptance on his part of its equiv 
alent, — that is a degrading thing. Will it not burn 
the purse in which you hold it ? Will it not blight 
the luxury for which you spend it ? Will you dare to 
buy the gift of true love with it ? Will you offer it in 
charity ? Will you pay it out for the support of your 
innocent children ? Will it not be a J udas-treasure, 
which you must not put into the treasury, because it is 
the price of blood ? 

So I rank high among the signs of a choice human 
youth the clearness of sight and the healthiness of 
soul which make a man refuse to have anything to do 
with the transference of property by chance, which 
make him hate and despise betting and gambling under 
their most approved and fashionable and accepted forms. 
Plentiful as those vices are among us, they still in some 
degree have the grace to recognize their own disgrace- 
fulness by the way in which they conceal themselves. 
Some sort of hiding and disguise they take instinctively. 
Let even that help to open our eyes to what they really 
are. To keep clear of concealment, to keep clear of 
the need of concealment, to do nothing which he might 
not do out on the middle of Boston Common at noon- 
day, — I cannot say how more and more that seems to 
me to be the glory of a young man's life. It is an aw- 
ful hour when the first necessity of hiding anything 
Gomes. The whoie life is different thenceforth. When 



The Choice Young Man. 



97 



there are questions to be feared and eyes to be avoided 
and subjects which must not be touched, then the bloom 
of life is gone. Put off that day as long as possible. 
Put it off forever if you can. And as you will hold nc 
truth for which you cannot give a reason, so let your- 
self be possessed of no dollar whose history you do not 
dare to tell. 

It is no drawback from the truth or power of all this 
that it involves the appeal to sentiment, for (and this 
is the next thing I want to say) the presence and the 
power of healthy sentiment is another token of the 
choice young humanity. Sentiment is the finest es- 
sence of the human life. It is, like all the finest things, 
the easiest to spoil. It bears testimony of itself that 
it is finer than judgment, because a thousand times 
when judgment is all clear and right, sentiment is 
tainted and all wrong. And hosts of men, feeling the 
mysterious dangers which beset sentiment, would fain 
banish it altogether. They do not know how to use it, 
and so they will not try. It is explosive and danger- 
ous, and so it shall be watched and made contraband, like 
dynamite. How many men do you know who can frankly 
look you in the face and say a piece of sentiment, and 
make it seem perfectly real and true, and not make either 
you or themselves, or both, feel silly and embarrassed 
by their saying it ? Now if men must come to that, the 
longer it can be before they come to it the better ! Let 
the sentiments have their true, unquestioned power in 
the young man's life. Let him glow with admiration, 
let him burn with indignation, let him believe with in- 
tensity, let him trust unquestioningly, let him sympa- 

7 



98 



The Choice Young Man. 



thize with all his soul. The hard young man is the 
most terrible of all. To have a skin at twenty that 
does not tingle with indignation at the sight of wrong 
and quiver with pity at the sight of pain is monstrous. 
Do you remember in "The Light of Asia" how the 
young Prince Siddartha caught his first sight of human 
suffering ? 

" Then cried he, while his lifted countenance 
Glowed with the burning passion of a love 
Unspeakable, the ardor of a hope 
Boundless, insatiate, ' 0 suffering world, 
O known and unknown of my common flesh, 
Caught in this common net of death and woe 
And life, which binds to both ! I see, I feel 
The vastness of the agony of earth, 
The vainness of its joys, the mockery 
Of all its best, the anguish of its worst ! ' " 

Do you remember the simpler, nobler story of the 
young Christ ? " When He came near He beheld the 
city, and wept over it." Tell me what becomes of 
the hard young man, proud of his unsensitiveness, even 
pretending to be more unsensitive than he is, incapable 
of enthusiasm, incapable of tears ; what becomes of him 
beside the knightliness of a sorrow such as that ? The 
little child is sensitive without a thought of effort. The 
old man often feels the joy and pain of men as if 
the long years had made it his own. But in between, 
the young man is hardened by self-absorption; when 
all the time he ought — with his imagination, with his 
power to realize things he has not been nor seen — to 
go responsive through the world, answering quickly to 
every touch, knowing the burdened man's burden just 



The Choice Young Man. 



99 



because of the impressed lightness of his own shoulders, 
feeling the sick man's pain all the more because his 
own flesh never knew an ache, buoyant through all with 
his unconquerable hope, overcoming the world with his 
exuberant faith, and farthest from sentimentality by 
the abundance and freedom of the sentiment which fills 
him. Be sure that there is no true escape from soft- 
ness in making yourself hard. It is like freezing your 
arm to keep it from decay. Only by filling it with 
blood and giving it the true flexibility of health, so only 
is it to be preserved from the corruption which you 
fear. Be not afraid of sentiment, but only of untruth. 
Trust your sentiments, and so be a man. 

It would be strange indeed if our first truth did not 
apply to the whole methods of thought as well as to the 
actions and the feelings. That truth was, you remem- 
ber, that youth began with the large circumference, and 
then filled in the circle gradually with the details of 
living. It does not start with the small detail and only 
gradually build out to the large idea. Now, what will 
that truth mean as we apply it to the intellectual life ? 
Will it not mean that, the choicer a young mind is, the 
more immediately it will begin with the perception of 
great truths, which then its thought and study and ex- 
perience will fill out and confirm ? It is the place and 
privilege of the young man to know immediately that 
God is good, that the world is hopeful, that spirit is real. 
These great ideas are his ideas. He does not prove God's 
existence, building it up out of hip own sight of the 
things God does. He sees God. He, the pure in heart, 
sees God ; and then all his life is occupied in gathering 

ILofC. 



100 



The Choice Young Man. 



into the substance of the faith which he has won by 
direct vision, the vividness and definiteness which sepa- 
rate successive experiences of God have to give. 

Until we know this method of the young man's knowl- 
edge we shall always be going astray, as I doubt not we 
are going astray now. We shall discredit every intuitive 
perception of the fresh nature, and demand of it to go 
without faith till, we may almost say, the time has 
come when the gaining of faith is possible no longer. 
We shall meet the spontaneous utterance of a belief in 
the spiritual world with a cold, " How do you know ? " 
which, failing to elicit what we call a reasonable an- 
swer, will kill the newly born belief and bury it in an 
early grave of scepticism. But bid the young man be- 
lieve that which his heart tells him is true, enlarging 
the testimony of his own heart by the witness of the 
universal human heart through a docile deference for 
authority; and then adjure, implore him to be pure 
and righteous, — for the light cannot come except 
through purity and righteousness; lust and iniquity 
are surely darkness — do this, and then you may be 
sure of — what ? Not that your young man will not 
make a thousand blunders, not that he will not some- 
times seem to lose his sight of truth, but that the method 
of his mental life is right, and so that in the end he 
must stand clear under a cloudless sky. 

The world's strength has been built up thus, by young 
men believing and uttering the truth they saw, — the 
greatest, largest truth, — and then their experience fill- 
ing that truth with solidity, until it became a foundation 
on which yet greater truth might rest. 



The Choice Young Man. 



101 



Begin with largeness of thought, and with positive- 
ness of thought. The way in which a man begins to 
think influences all his thinking to the end of his life. 
Begin by seeking for what is true, not for what is false, 
in the thought and belief which you find about you. 
Be as critical as you will, search as severely as you 
want to into the belief which offers itself for your ac- 
ceptance, but let your search and criticism always have 
for its purpose that you may find what you may believe, 
not that you may find what you need not believe. Some 
things which your first thinking accepts, your riper 
thought may feel compelled to lay aside ; but the habit 
of believing once established will not be lost out of your 
life, and the young man's time is the time to make that 
habit. Scepticism is not merely the disbelief of some 
propositions. If it were that, there is not one of us but 
would be a sceptic. It is the habit and the preference 
of disbelieving. God save us all from that scepticism ! 
God save especially our young men from it, for a scep- 
tical young man is a monstrosity. 

What shall we say about this whole last matter, 
the matter of belief, except that the true young man's 
life, the choice young man's life, is bound to be a life 
of vision. To see the large things in their largeness, 
— that is his privilege; and there is no privilege which 
is not a duty too. It is God's word to Abraham, " Look 
now toward heaven and tell the stars if thou be able to 
number them. So shall thy seed be. " " And Abraham 
believed the Lord and it was counted unto him for 
righteousness." Afterwards came the long journeys 
and the struggles and the darknesses and the disap- 



102 



The Choice Young Man. 



pointment and the sins ; at the last came the quiet rest 
in the cave of Machpelah which is before Mamre, where 
they buried him ; but the vision of the stars never faded 
from his eyes. 

And now I do not know whether there has come at 
all out of what I have said anything like a clear image 
of the choice young man. As I said when I began, I 
should care little to try to create that image if it were 
some strange, exceptional creature that I was trying to 
carve. But it is not that ; it is the true young human 
being, the type and flower of the first vigor of humanity. 
And these are the qualities which we have seen in him, 
— purity of body, mind, and soul ; simple integrity, and 
a dignity which will not have what is not his, no mattei 
under what specious form of game or wager it has come 
into his hands ; tenderness, sympathy, sentiment, — ■ 
call it what name you will, a soul that is not cynical or 
cruel ; and positive, broad thought and conviction. Do 
these things, as I name them, blend with one another ? 
Does there stand out as their result a figure recogniz- 
able and clear, well-knit and strong, brave, generous, 
and true, but very little conscious of itself, claiming the 
love and honor of the human heart ? 

For men do love the type and flower of their own 
young manhood. Little children and young boys look 
up to it with touching reverence. Old men look back 
to it with wistful longing, often with a perplexed won- 
der how they ever passed themselves through a land 
which they see now to be so rich and kept so little of 
its richness. Men love and honor it; and their love 
and honor for the choice young man is only measured 



The Choice Young Man. 



103 



by the disappointment and anger and disgust with which 
they look at the young libertine, the young gambler, the 
young cynic, the young sceptic, the young fool. 

If all these qualities do really blend into a recogniz- 
able character and being, then there ought to be some 
fact, the fine resultant of them all, in which they should 
all take expression, and which should represent them 
before the world. As the resultant of all the qualities 
of a star is its brightness, and the resultant of all the 
qualities of a flower is its fragrance, and the resultant 
of all the qualities of an action is its glory, — so the 
resultant of the purity and integrity and tenderness and 
thoughtfulness of a young human life ought to be its 
joy. I cannot count that a separate quality, far less 
a separate action ; it is the radiance, it is the aroma of 
all the qualities. The depressions of youth are very 
real, as real and as likely to appear as are the clouds 
which gather at the rising of the sun. But the sun and 
not the cloud is the characteristic fact of the morning ; 
and joy, not sadness, is the characteristic fact of young 
humanity. To know this, to keep it as the truth to 
which the soul constantly returns, — that is the young 
man's salvation. Whatever young depression there is, 
there must be no young despair. In the morning, at 
least, it must seem a fine thing to live. 

Only once in this sermon have I spoken of Jesus as 
the specimen of human youth. But He is such a speci- 
men always. And I appeal to all of you who have sym- 
pathetically read the Gospels to say whether you do 
not feel through all His life of sorrow the subtle, cer- 
tain presence of this joy of which I speak. It breaks 



104 



The Choice Young Man. 



out into flame upon the mountain summits of His life ; 
but, where there is no flame, it nestles into warmth 
in all His ordinary intercourse with men, and it glows 
with a fervor of consolation which is unmistakable be- 
neath the darkest blackness of His suffering. It is the 
ideal joy of life, burning through all the hardest and 
cruellest circumstances of life, and asserting, in spite of 
everything, the true condition of the Son of God and the 
Son of Man. 

Let this conduct me naturally to the last word I want 
to say in order to make all that I have said complete. 
I have spoken of the young man's character and life, 
and I have seemed to say nothing at all of his religion. 
Is it because I have forgotten his religion or thought it 
of small consequence ? God forbid ! It is because one 
of the most effectual and convincing ways to reach 
religion is to make life seem so noble and exacting that 
. it shall itself seem to demand religion with the great 
cry, " Who is sufficient for these things ? " When not 
yet driven by the stress of sin and sorrow, but exalted 
by the revelation of what life might be, and eager with 
the witness of the truth of that revelation which fills his 
own self-consciousness, the young man looks abroad for 
help that he may realize it, then he finds Christ. And 
he finds Christ in the way that belongs to him just then 
and there, just in the time and place where he is stand- 
ing. He finds Christ the model and the master. It is 
the personal Christ that makes the young man's reli- 
gion. "Behold this being, young Himself with the 
eternal youth, knowing this life which I am just begin- 
ning, with the true share in it which made His Incar- 



The Choice Young Man. 



105 



nation, living now in the heavens and also here by my 
side, with these dimly felt purposes of life which are in 
me all perfectly clear and bright and glorious in Him, 
— behold this Christ standing before me, pointing to 
the heights of the completed human life, and saying 
not, 4 Go there, ' but saying, 4 Follow me, ' — going be 
fore us into the land our souls desire ! " 

When religion comes to mean simply following Christ, 
when the young man gives himself to Christ as his 
Leader and his Lord, when he prays to Christ with the 
entire sense that he is laying hold of the perfect strength 
for the perfect work, — then the whole circle is com- 
plete. Power and purpose, purpose and power, both are 
there; and only the eternal growth is needed for the 
infinite result. 

It is always sad not to feel the choiceness of anything 
which has in it wonderful and fine capacities, — to be 
content with the ordinariness and coarseness of that 
which is capable of being exquisite and great. Oh, that 
there could thrill through the being of our young men 
some electrical sense that they are God's sons, that so 
they might make themselves the servants of His Christ, 
and live the life and attain the nature which are rightly 
theirs. God grant it for the young men who are here 
5o-day ! 



VII. 



BACKGROUNDS AND FOREGROUNDS. 

For lo, He that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and 
declareth unto man what is His thought, that maketh the morning dark- 
ness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, — the Lord, the God 
of Hosts, is His name. — Amos iv. 13. 

The mountains to the Hebrew were always full of 
mystery and awe. They stood around the sunlit level 
of his daily life robed in deep clouds, the home of wan- 
dering winds, flowing down with waters, trembling, as 
it seemed, with the awful footsteps of God. 

They made indeed for him the background of all life, 
as they make the background of every landscape in 
which they stand. Close to the eye that watches them 
there are the shrubs and grass ; the river murmurs at 
our feet ; the common works of life go on. And then 
beyond, holding it all in their strong grasp, setting 
their solid forms against the sky, sending their streams 
down into the open plain, stand the great hills, which 
keep the sight from wandering indefinitely into space 
and throw out in relief all the details of the broad 
scenery. The foreground of the plain-land rests upon 
the background of the hills. From them it gains its 
lights and shadows. The two depend on one another. 
Take the background away and the foreground which 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 107 



is left is tame and thin, and leads to nothing. Take 
the foreground away, and the background, with nothing 
to lead up to it, is misty and unreal. The man who 
lives and works in the foreground does not think all 
the time about the background ; but it is always there, 
and he is always unconsciously aware of it. The back- 
ground and foreground together make the complete land- 
scape in the midst of which a human life is set. 

Now all this is true not merely in the world of outer 
Nature, but also in the world of inner life. There is a 
foreground and a background to every man's career. 
There are the things that press themselves immediately 
upon our attention, — the details of life, the works our 
hands are doing, the daily thoughts our minds are 
thinking, the ground and grass on which we tread. 
Those are the foreground of our living. And then, 
beyond them, there are the great truths which we be- 
lieve, the broad and general consecrations of our life 
which we have made, the large objects of our desire, 
the great hopes and impulses which keep us at our 
work. Those are the mountain backgrounds of our life. 
When we lift our eyes from the immediate task or 
pleasure, our eyes rest on them. They are our reser- 
voirs of power; out of them come down our streams 
of strength. Once more the background and the fore- 
ground together make the perfect picture. You cannot 
leave out the foreground of immediate detail. You 
cannot leave out the background of established princi- 
ple and truth. Both must be there, and then the picture 
is complete. 

The danger of our life is not ordinarily lest the fore- 



108 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 



ground be forgotten or ignored. Only a dreamer here 
and there, wrapt in his distant vision, forgets the press- 
ing duties and the tempting pleasures which offer them- 
selves directly to our eyes and hands. They crowd too 
closely on us. The detail of life at once commands us 
and attracts us. The danger with most of us is not lest 
it should be neglected or forgotten. It is the back- 
grounds of life that we are likely to forget. The moun- 
tains sink out of our sight. The highest sources of 
power do not send us their supply. Shall we discard 
the figure for a moment and say that to most men the 
actual immediate circumstances of life are so pressing 
that they forget the everlasting truths and forces by 
which those circumstances must be made dignified and 
strong ? Then must come something like the cry of 
Amos the Prophet, " Lo, He that f ormeth the mountains, 
and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is 
His Thought, that maketh the morning darkness and 
treadeth upon the high places of the earth. " Is there 
not in these words, dimly but very grandly and majesti- 
cally set forth, the great suggestion of the divine back- 
ground of all life ? It is the same which Tennyson has 
pictured in the Vision of Sin: — 

" At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ? ' 
To which an answer pealed from that high land, 
But in a tongue no man could understand ; 
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
God made Himself an awful rose of Dawn." 

And now, if I have made my meaning plain, you 
understand what I intend when I say that I want to 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 109 



make my subject for this morning The Backgrounds of 
Life. We are troubled — whoever looks carefully at 
his fellow -men is troubled — by the superficialness and 
immediateness of living. There is a need of distance 
and of depth. And the distance and depth are there if 
men would only feel them. Let us try to see what and 
where they are. 

I speak especially to those who are young, whose life 
is just beginning, for it is in youth that the landscape 
of a life most easily constructs itself in its completeness. 
Then, in youth, the immediate thoughts and occupa- 
tions are intensely vivid ; and at the same time the great 
surrounding truths and principles have a reality which 
they often lose in later life. Sometimes, much later, 
as the man grows old, the great surrounding truths and 
principles gather once more into sight. The old man 
feels again the distance, which the middle life forgot. 
But with him by that time the immediate interest has 
grown dull. The present occupations are not pressing 
and vivid. The beauty, the glory of young life, of the 
best and healthiest of young life, is that while it is in- 
tensely busy with the present it is also aware of and in- 
spired by those larger truths, those everlasting timeless 
verities out of which all true life must be fed. Youth 
has the power of realism and idealism most perfectly 
combined. Its landscape is most harmoniously com- 
plete ; therefore it is to healthy youth, to life with all 
its promise opening before it, that one speaks with the 
surest hope of being understood as he discourses on the 
backgrounds of life. 

I shall be most likely to make myself intelligible if I 



110 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 



speak not too generally, but describe to you several of 
the special ways in which the greater and more lasting 
stands behind the less and temporary and holds it in 
its grasp. 

Consider first, then, how behind every foreground of 
action lies the background of character on which the 
action rests and from which it gets its life and mean- 
ing. It matters not whether it be an age, a nation, a 
church, a man ; anything which is capable both of being 
and of acting must feel its being behind its acting, must 
make its acting the expression of its being or its exist- 
ence is very unsatisfactory and thin. What does it 
mean to me that the French Revolution burst out in 
fury a hundred years ago, unless in that outburst I see 
the utterance of the whole character of that crushed, 
wronged, exasperated time which had gathered into it- 
self the suppressed fury of centuries of selfish despot- 
ism ? What is it to me that a great reformer arises and 
sets some old wrong right, unless I see that his coming 
and the work he does are not mere happy accidents, but 
the expression of great necessities of human life and of 
a condition which mankind has reached by slow develop- 
ment and education ? What is your brave act without a 
brave nature behind it ? What is your smile unless I 
know that you are kind ? What is your indignant blow 
unless your heart is on fire ? What is all your activity 
without you ? How instantly the impression of a char- 
acter creates itself, springs into shape behind a deed. 
A man cannot sell you goods across a counter, or drive 
you a mile in his carriage on the road, or take your 
ticket in the cars, or hold the door open to let you pass, 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. Ill 



without your getting, if you are sensitive, some idea of 
what sort of man he is, and seeing his deed colored with 
the complexion of his character. 

If this were not so, life would grow very tame and 
dull. We cannot picture to ourselves how tame and 
dull it would become. An engine has no background of 
character. Its deeds are simple deeds. Unless you feel 
behind it the nature of the man who made it, its actions 
are complete and final things and suggest and reveal 
nothing beyond themselves; therefore its monotonous 
clank and beat grows wearisome. Its very admirable 
orderliness destroys its interest. You weary of it. 
Nobody can make an engine the hero of his novel ; for 
man, being character, will care for nothing which has 
not character behind it, finding expression through its 
life. 

Here is the value of reality, of sincerity. Reality, 
sincerity, is nothing but the true relation between action 
and character. Expressed artistically, it is the har- 
mony between the foreground and the background of a 
life. We have all seen pictures where the background 
and the foreground were not in harmony with one an- 
other ; each might be good in itself but the two did not 
belong together. Nature never would have joined them 
to each other, and so they did not hold to one another 
but seemed to spring apart. The hills did not embrace 
the plain, but flung it away from them ; the plain did 
not rest upon the hills, but recoiled from their embrace. 
They were a violence to one another. Who does not 
know human lives of which precisely the same thing is 
true? The deeds are well enough and the character is 



112 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 



well enough, but they do not belong together. The one 
does not express the other. The man is by nature 
quiet, earnest, serious, sedate. If he simply expressed 
his calm and faithful life in calm and faithful deeds, 
all would be well ; but, behold ! he tries to be restless, 
radical, impatient, vehement, and how his meaningless 
commotion tries us. The man's nature is prosaic and 
direct, but he makes his actions complicated and ro- 
mantic. It is the man's nature to believe, and only 
listen to the scepticism which he chatters! It is the 
discord of background and foreground, of character and 
action. 

On the other hand, when the two are not in discord 
but in harmony, every one feels the beauty of the pic- 
ture which they make. The act which simply utters 
the thought which is the man, what satisfaction it gives 
you ! The satisfaction is so natural and instinctive that 
men are ready enough to think, at least, that they pre- 
fer a bad man who without reserve, without disguise, 
expresses his badness in bad deeds, to another bad man 
who with a futile shame tries to pretend in his activi- 
ties that he is good. "Let us have sincerity at least," 
they say. They are not always right. The good deed 
which the bad man tries to do may be a poor blind 
clutching at a principle which he does not understand 
but dimly feels, — the principle of the reaction of the 
deed upon the character ; that principle and its working 
we must not lose sight of in our study. The heart 
gives life to the arm. The arm declares the life of the 
heart ; but the heart also gets life from the arm. Its 
vigorous exertion makes the central furnace of the body 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 113 



to burn more brightly. So the good action may have 
some sort of power over the character of which at first 
it expresses not the actual condition but only the 
shames, the standards, and the hopes. 

What will be the rule of life which such a description 
of life as this must necessarily involve ? Will it not 
include both the watchfulness over character and the 
watchfulness over action, either of which alone is wo- 
fully imperfect ? We are familiar enough with a cer- 
tain lofty talk which seems to make small account of 
action. " To be rather than to do ; not what you do but 
what you are ; be brave and true and generous, " — so 
some idealists seem to talk. And on the other hand 
there are hard-headed practical people who have no 
eyes for anything but action. " Do your duty and do 
not worry about the condition of your soul ; your deed, 
not you, is what the world desires ; get done your 
stroke of work and die, and the world will take up the 
issue of your life and use it and never ask what sort of 
man it was from whom the issue came, — to do and not 
to be, that you must make your motto. " 

Oh, the inveterate partialness of man ! Oh, his per- 
sistent inability to take in the two sides of any truth, 
the two hemispheres of any globe ! " This ought ye 
to have done and not to leave the other undone " — some- 
times it seems as if that were the most continually 
needed word of Christ. When will men learn that, 
above all, to feed the fountain of character and yet 
never to neglect the guiding of the streams of action 
which flow out of that fountain, — that that in its com- 
pleteness is the law of life. All the perplexing ques- 

6 



114 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 



tions about the contemplative and active life, about 
faith and practice, about self-discipline and service of 
our fellow-men have their key and solution hidden some- 
where within this truth of the background and the 
foreground — the background of character and the fore- 
ground of action — without both of which together the 
picture cannot be complete. 

Do we ask ourselves what culture there is by which 
the human life can be at once trained into character 
and at the same time kept true in active duty ? I reply 
that there is only one culture conceivable by which it 
may perfectly be done, — that is the culture of personal 
loyalty, the culture of admiration for a nature and obe- 
dience to a will opening together into a resemblance 
to Him whom we ardently desire and enthusiastically 
obey. 

I recall what Jesus said, " You must be born again, " 

— that is His inexorable demand for the background of 
character. " If ye love me, keep my commandments, " 

— that is His absolute insistence on the foreground of 
action. And the power of both of them — the power 
by which they both unite into one life — lies in the 
personal love and service of Himself. 

This is the largest and richest education of a human 
nature, — not an instruction, not a commandment, but 
a Friend. It is not God's truth, it is not God's law, 

— it is God that is the salvation of the world. It is 
not Christianity, it is not the Christian religion, it 
is Christ who has done for us, who is doing for us 
every day, that which our souls require. What has 
He done for you, my friend ? First, He has made you a 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 



115 



new creature in Himself. He has given you a new 
character ; and then He has guided you and ruled you, 
making you do new, good, holy actions in obedience to 
Him. Not two blessings, not two salvations, — only 
one ! This is His promise to the soul which He in- 
vites, " Come, give yourself to me and you shall be new 
and do new things ; you shall have opened within you 
the fulness of new admirations, new judgments, new 
standards, new thoughts, — everything which makes 
new character; and there shall be new power for the 
daily task, new clearness, new skill in the things which 
every day brings to be done." The background and 
the foreground ! " This ought ye to have done and not 
to leave the other undone, " — the full harmonious 
picture of a life ! 

Closely related to the background of character, and 
yet distinguishable from it, is what I may call the back- 
ground of the greater purpose. It is like travelling on 
a long journey. You set out with a clear intention of 
going to some distant place where there is work wait- 
ing for you to do. You keep that intention all the 
way ; it governs the direction of your travel ; it keeps 
you moving on and will not let you wander, and will 
not let you rest ; it gives dignity and meaning to every 
mile. But under and within that intention lie the num- 
berless details, the interesting circumstances of your 
journey, the people whom you meet, the landscape 
which you see, the conversations which you hold, the 
waking and the sleeping, the idleness and occupation 
of your days. Often and often you forget the greater 
purpose of your travel in your absorption in its inci- 



116 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 



dents, and yet that greater purpose is always lying 
behind the incidents and holding them in their place. 
If it should vanish, they would become instantly insig- 
nificant and frivolous. That is exactly the way in 
which a man's purpose in life lies behind and gives 
dignity and meaning to everything that the mail does 
or says. He is not always thinking of it. The ambi- 
tious lawyer is not always consciously determining to 
conquer at the bar. The eager scholar is not every 
moment consciously hungering for knowledge. The 
avaricious merchant is not always consciously strug- 
gling to be rich. The unselfish philanthropist does 
sometimes cease consciously to labor for his fellow- 
man. But each of them has always the greater purpose 
of his life unabandoned, unextinguished, resting behind 
the lightest and most unprofessional action that he 
does, and making it different because it is he — this 
man with this purpose — that does it. No wave that 
plays most lightly on the beach which does not feel the 
great solemn ocean with the mysterious heaving of its 
tide behind. 

The greater purpose may be bad or good, horrible or 
splendid. One man's greater purpose is an undying 
passion for revenge. Another man's greater purpose 
is a perpetual desire for the glory of God. Which ever 
it is, it dominates the life. No word that the man 
speaks but is reverberated from that background; no 
act he does that is not shone through by its color. It 
is what makes two lives which outwardly are just the 
same, essentially and manifestly different. It is the 
life. The other, the outward exhibition, is the living. 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 117 



In the larger experience of men, in what we call his- 
tory, the same truth is true; the same landscape, the 
same combination of background and foreground, builds 
itself. Behind the immediate activity of any people 
rises what we call the public spirit, by which we mean 
the general thought or idea or purpose of living which 
the whole people has conceived. Behind the things 
which a time is doing there grows up the Zeitgeist, or 
spirit of the time. The countless actions of a State, its 
laws, its wars, its administrations of justice, its shap- 
ing of its institutions, — all go on within the influence 
of its idea of its own destiny, the thought of why it ex- 
ists in the world and what its existence means. Poor 
is the life that is not in sympathy with its time and 
with its nation. It fastens itself into no complete pict- 
ure. It is a spot of discord which the harmony of the 
whole is always trying to cast out and throw away. 

In the smaller world, it is a man's profession which 
makes the most palpable background of his life. If 
the choice of it has sprung, as it ought to spring, in- 
tuitively and almost unconsciously out of the slowly 
developed dispositions and capacities of a man's nature, 
it then enfolds itself warmly about all he thinks and 
does. It is as the merchant, the lawyer, the artist 
that he does everything. Every most broadly human 
act — the way in which he walks the streets, the way in 
which he serves his family, the way in which he rea- 
sons about abstract truth — has in it the marks and to- 
kens of the chosen occupation of his life. Thereby they 
all gather consistency. They are saved from being 
scattered fragments. The life does not drift, but 



118 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 



moves from recognized purpose to assured result, carry- 
ing each drop onward in its current. 

If this were the only truth it would seem to make life 
very stiff and rigid; it would hold every act in the 
slavery of the pre-established purpose. But here again 
the power of a re-active influence comes in. The fore- 
ground tells upon the background, as well as the back- 
ground on the foreground. The settled purpose, the 
profession, the dedication of the life is not a fixed and 
uniform thing. Nothing is fixed and uniform. Every- 
thing is played upon and beaten through and through by 
personal nature. No two buglers blow their bugles, no 
two prisoners rattle their hoarse chains alike. There- 
fore the great purpose is ruled by the man, as well as 
the man by the great purpose, and it is the complicated 
result of the mutual ruling that makes the life. It is 
the background and foreground telling on each other, 
that make the picture. 

And let us notice this, that both the great purpose of 
a life and its immediate activities are provided with 
their safeguards that they may not be lost. The great 
purpose has its impressiveness and its solemnity. The 
immediate activities have their absorbing present in- 
terest. So strong is this last that the great purpose 
often ceases to be conscious ; yet let us not think that 
this makes it cease to be powerful. I forget to think 
about the thing I have resolved to be ; I am not ponder- 
ing upon the dignity of the law or the sacredness of the 
ministry the livelong day ; I am busy, I am delighted 
with the detail of life which my career involves, but 
none the less I am in the power of the idea with which 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 119 



I undertook it, I am sensible in an instant to any im- 
pulse which turns me out of its course, and I am ready 
to claim the triumph when the gates of success open 
before me at the end. 

Once more we ask ourselves, as we asked before, 
What kind of life will the presence of this background, 
the background of great purposes, involve ? And our 
answer is, once more, that it involves a double life, — a 
life of practical alertness and a life of profound conse- 
cration, a life intensely conscious of the present tem- 
porary forms of duty and a life also deeply conscious 
of the unchangeable, eternal, ever-identical substance 
of duty. Men lose the first, and they become vague 
dreamers ; men lose the second, and they become clat- 
tering machines ; men keep them both, and they are sons 
of God, living in their Father's house, filled with its 
unchanging spirit, and yet faithful and happy in its 
ever-changing tasks. 

We ask ourselves, How shall a life like that be won ? 
And again we must answer as we answered before, By 
personal allegiance. No other power is large enough 
and flexible enough at once to make it. Loving obedi- 
ence, loving obedience is the only atmosphere in which 
the vision of the general purpose and the faithfulness 
in special work grow in their true proportion and re- 
lation to each other. The distant hills with the glory 
on their summits, and the close meadow where the grass 
waits for the scythe, — they meet completely in the 
broad kingdom of a loved and obeyed Lord. And who 
is Lord but Christ ? And where but in the soul of him 
who finds in Christ the worthy revealer of the life's pur- 



120 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 
— — ■ ■ ^ 

pose and the sufficient master of every deed shall the 
great ideals of life and the petty details of life come har- 
moniously together ? Obey Him, love Him, and nothing 
is too great, nothing is too little; for love knows no 
struggle of great or little. No impulse is too splendid 
for the simplest task; no task is too simple for the 
most splendid impulse. 

I hasten to say a word or two upon another of the 
backgrounds of life, which every earnest heart will rec- 
ognize the moment it is pointed out. I mean the back- 
ground of prayer. Every true prayer has its background 
and its foreground. The foreground of prayer is the 
intense, immediate desire for a certain blessing which 
seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have ; the 
background of prayer is the quiet, earnest desire that 
the will of God, whatever it may be, should be done. 
What a picture is the perfect prayer of Jesus in Gethsem- 
ane ! In front, burns the strong desire to escape death 
and to live ; but, behind, there stands, calm and strong, 
the craving of the whole life for the doing of the will of 
God. In front, the man's eagerness for life; behind, 
" He that f ormeth the mountains and createth the winds 
and declareth unto man His thought, that maketh the 
morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of 
the earth." In front, the teeming plain; behind, the 
solemn hills. I can see the picture of the prayer with ab- 
solute clearness. Leave out the foreground — let there 
be no expression of the wish of Him who prays — and 
there is left a pure submission which is almost fatalism. 
Leave out the background — let there be no acceptance 
of the will of God — and the prayer is only an expression 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 121 



of self-will, a petulant claiming of the uncorrected 
choice of Him who prays. Only when the two, fore- 
ground and background, are there together, — the special 
desire resting on the universal submission, the univer- 
sal submission opening into the special desire, — only 
then is the picture perfect and the prayer complete ! 

What Christ's prayer was all prayers may be, all true 
prayers must be. What is it that you ask for when you 
kneel and pray ? Directly, no doubt, it is some special 
mercy. It is the coming in of your ship ; it is the re- 
covery of your friend ; it is the opportunity of useful- 
ness which you desire for yourself. But do you want 
any of those things if God does not see that it is best 
that you should have them ? Would they not fade out 
of your desire if you should know that they were not 
His will ? Do you not wish them because it seems to 
you that they must be best, and therefore must be His 
will ? Is it not, then, His will which is your real, your 
fundamental, your essential prayer? You must keep 
that essential prayer very clear or the special prayer 
becomes wilful and trivial. You must pray with the 
great prayer in sight. You must feel the mountains 
above you while you work upon your little garden. 
Little by little your special wishes and the eternal will 
of God will grow into harmony with one another, — the 
background will draw the foreground to itself. Fore- 
ground and background at last will blend in perfect har- 
mony. All conflict will die away and the great spiritual 
landscape from horizon to horizon be but one. That is 
the prayer of eternity — the prayer of heaven — to which 
we may come, no one can say how near, on earth. 



122 Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 



I must not multiply my series of suggestions. I hope 
you see that they are mere suggestions and instances 
of that which pervades all life. All life has this con- 
struction of the foreground and the background. Every= 
where there must be the background on which the fore- 
ground rests ; everywhere the foreground grows thin and 
false if the background is destroyed or ignored. The 
love for truth behind the belief in the special creed, 
the sense of duty behind the conviction that this par- 
ticular thing must be done, the joy in life behind the 
enjoyment of this single pleasure, all human history 
behind the present age, the whole man's culture behind 
the training of one particular power, the good of all 
behind the good of each, - — all these are instances 
among a hundred others of the backgrounds of life, and 
bear witness of how the construction of life is every- 
where the same. 

"Wherever the background is lost, the foreground 
grows false and thin. What is this foolish realism in 
our literature but the loss of the background of the 
ideal, without which every real is base and sordid ? In 
how many bright books there is no God treading on the 
high places of the earth ; nay, there are no high places 
of the earth for God to tread upon. What is the prac- 
tical man's contempt for theory ? What is the modern 
man's contempt for history ? What is the ethical man's 
contempt for religion % All of them are the denials of 
the background of life. All of them therefore are thin 
and weak. 

Again I say that it is only in personal love and loyalty 
that life completes itself. Only when man loves and 



Backgrounds and Foregrounds. 123 



enthusiastically obeys God, does the background of the 
universal and the eternal rise around the special and 
temporary, and the scenery of life become complete. 

Therefore it is that Christ, who brings God to us 
and brings us to God, is the great background-builder. 
You give yourself to Him, and oh, the wondrous widen 
ing, the wondrous deepening of life ! Behind the pres- 
ent opens eternity; behind the thing to do opens the 
thing to be ; behind selfishness opens sacrifice ; behind 
duty opens love; behind every bondage and limitation 
opens the glorious liberty of the child of God. So may 
we give ourselves to Him, and life become complete for 
all of us ! 



VIII. 



THE SILENCE OF CHEIST. 

But He answered her not a word. — Matt. xv. 23. 

We often think about the different tones which maj 
belong to the same words. We do not think so often 
about the different way in which silences may be under- 
stood. A man speaks to me, and I say to myself, " What 
does he mean by what he says ? " Not merely " What 
do his words mean ? " but " What does he mean ? " But 
a man stands silent in my presence, and there too I must 
ask, before I understand it perfectly, "What does he 
mean by this silence ? Why does he stand there and 
not speak ? " For silence has as various moods as 
speech, and its moods are far more subtle. One man 
sits silent in my room while I am at my work, and his 
speechless presence fills the room with sympathetic in- 
fluence and an atmosphere in which my work almost 
does itself. Another man the next day sits silent in 
the same chair, and his silence weighs like lead upon 
my brain and hand, and work is hopeless. And so with 
the same man at different times. I walk with my 
friend to-day, and he does not say a word, and my 
soul all the time is saying to itself, " Oh, if he would 
only break out and upbraid me ; no condemnation could 
be half as awful as this dreadful silence. " I walk with. 



The Silence of Christ. 



125 



the same friend tomorrow, and am almost afraid to have 
him speak because it seems as if no sympathy could be 
so entire, no inflow of his richness into me could be so 
perfect as this in which our lives silently are almost 
mingling into one. So silence is as various as speech. 
Silence is what the silent man is. There is the silence 
of vacancy and dulness, and the silence of the thought 
for which the thinker cannot find sufficient words. 
There is the silence of crafty concealment, and the si- 
lence which is completer revelation than any speech 
could be. There is the silence of utter condemnation, 
and the silence which is sweeter than any spoken praise. 
The completest joy and the profoundest sorrow, both 
are silent. It is as different in men as it is in Nature. 
There is the silence of sunrise, all tremulous with hope, 
and the silence of sunset, wrapped in the stillness of its 
memories. There is the stillness of the snake slipping 
unseen through the grass, the silence of the cattle feed- 
ing on the hillside, the silence of the war-horse waiting 
for the signal of the battle. How different they are 
from one another, yet all alike are silent. 

I turn this afternoon to the record of one of the 
silences of Him whose silences must have been most 
significant because of the richness of His nature and 
the deep importance of all His relations to mankind. 
One day a Canaanitish woman came running aftei 
Jesus with the cry, "O Lord, thou Son of David, my 
daughter is grievously vexed with a devil ! " We hear 
the sharp agony pierce the keen, trembling air. The 
poor woman's whole soul is in her words. She cries to 
Him in whom alone seems any chance of help; then, 



126 



The Silence of Christ. 



almost frightened with her cry, she pauses. The thing 
is done. Her heart has told its story. The face of 
Christ has touched and stirred her misery into self- 
consciousness, and out of the cloud this lightning of 
her cry has flashed. The thing is done, and she waits 
tremblingly for the result. Can we not almost hear 
her heart beat as she listens ? What will He say ? And 
then see what does happen. " He answered her not a 
word. " Bowed down before Him there, waiting to hear 
whether He was blaming her or blessing her, think of 
the dismay with which her soul must have been filled 
as slowly the moments passed by and she became aware 
that He was doing neither. The sense of His silence 
standing over her, how bewildering, how terrible, how 
worse than any blame it must have been ! But, behold ! 
I think that I can see her slowly lift her eyes. She 
cannot bear this suspense. She must look this awful 
silence in the face. Her eyes find out the face of 
Christ, and then she feels Him behind, within, His 
silence. She knows Him not clearly but certainly. 
He is there, and she has found Him. The disciples 
come and upbraid her, but she does not stir. She will 
know what this silence means before she goes. She 
knows that it means something gracious; and so she 
listens and listens till at last the silence is broken and 
she hears Him say, " Oh, woman, great is thy faith, be 
it unto thee even as thou wilt. " Then she goes away 
satisfied, and finds her daughter whole. 

This story, then, suggests a study which must very 
often have forced itself on every devout and earnest 
soul. What is the meaning of the silences of God ? 



The Silence of Christ. 



127 



How shall I understand it when I pray to Him and He 
answers me not a word, when my whole life cries out to 
Him and there comes no reply ? Such silences there 
are beyond all doubt, — times when the sense of need is 
overwhelming ; when the soul, bowed down with its bur- 
den, comes staggering up to the door and finds it closed, 
and no knocking of the desperate and bleeding hands 
brings any answer. The connection seems to be broken. 
The sympathy seems to be lost. There, in the great 
depth and distance which seemed but yesterday to be 
full of God as the sky is full of sunlight, now there is 
no God at all, — nothing but emptiness and blackness. 
Oh, it is terrible ! Better even the curse of God — so 
sometimes the soul thinks ; better anything which should 
show that He was there, and that He was aware of me, 
than this blank silence. Oh, that He would say some- 
thing ! 

But then the question always keeps coming up, May 
it not be that He is saying something which I cannot 
hear ? There is at the bottom of every soul such a true 
sense of its own incapacity that it does not go very far 
into the question of r why God does not speak, before it 
begins to wonder whether it is ready and quick and 
spiritual enough to hear Him if He did. There are two 
kinds or grounds of silence. There is the silence of 
the empty, speechless ocean or prairie, and there is the 
silence which envelops the deaf man who stands in 
the very central roar of London. Which is this silence 
of God ? It may be either ; nay, it may be both. Both 
elements may be in it. And so our study of God's 
silences divides itself into two parts : First, there are 



128 



The Silence of Christ. 



the silences which are apparent, and then there are the 
silences which are real. We cannot always draw the 
line between them, and say of any special silence to 
which class it belongs, but we know that both kinds 
exist ; and he does not fully understand the fact that 
often his life seems to have lost its communication 
with the life of God who has not asked the meaning 
both of the apparent and the real silences which refuse 
his soul an answer. 

Let us speak, then, first of God's apparent silences, 
— of the times when He really answers us but does not 
seem to. That such times would be, I think that I 
should know beforehand if I thought in general of the 
greatness of God and the littleness of man. There is 
nothing in that contrast that should make the great 
refuse to hear the little. The great would become 
little if that were the effect. Your beast looks up ap- 
pealingly into your face. The vast difference between 
his beasthood and your manhood does not make you 
disregard his mute appeal, — you would be almost a 
brute yourself if that were so, — but it does make him 
in large degree unable to understand how his appeal 
touches you. Perhaps he catches some glimpse of sym- 
pathy upon your face, perhaps he is aware of some tone 
in your voice ; but all your thoughtfulness, all your care 
and plan to help him, of that he knows nothing. 

The resemblance does not tell the story, for we are 
far more to God than the beast is to us. We are of the 
same nature as God. We are God's children. Take, 
then, your child. He asks you for some blessing. It 
seems to him an easy thing, something which you can 



The Silence of Christ. 



129 



almost take up in your hand and give him; but you 
know that it is something far more complicated. It is 
something which you must scheme and plan for, some- 
thing which can only be given from life to life and not 
from hand to hand. When, then, your brow knits with 
thought as to how you may give the gift, may it not 
well be that he thinks you have refused him ? Is it not 
evident that he must have your mind, and see with your 
eyes, before he can know what is the giving of the gift, 
and so can know that it is given ? 

So that we might be sure beforehand that there would 
be times when God would seem to refuse what He was 
actually at the very moment giving. But look at it in 
another way. Think of the unconscious wants in us 
which are forever laying themselves before God : needs 
which we do not know ourselves enough to apprehend, 
far less to understand ; deficiencies whose worst defect 
is that they are not aware of their own falling short ; 
poverties which count themselves riches ; sin which 
calls itself goodness; shame which imagines itself 
glory, — all of these go with a pathetic urgency into 
God's presence and plead for a supply which is all the 
more needed because the needy soul itself to which they 
belong is not aware of want! God answers all these 
prayers. He gives to each unconscious need all the 
supply which, in its unconsciousness, it is able to re- 
ceive ; but the soul, ignorant of the need, cannot know 
the answer which its needs are getting. It does not 
dream what God is doing for it. Blessing comes into 
it, and it is wholly unaware. But may it not be — will 
it not almost certainly be — that, in large part by means 



130 



Tiie Silence of Christ. 



of the unrecognized but real supply, the sense of need 
will be awakened, and will recognize itself in the pres- 
ence of the supply which it has received ? So it is that 
children come only gradually to know their father's 
and their mother's care. They are cared for before 
they are aware that they cannot care for themselves. 
The helplessness by and by reveals itself. Then they 
cry out ; and only in their crying out do they attain the 
knowledge of how their helplessness has been already 
enfolded in protecting love. In the soul's history there 
is the same period of wakening, — when, conscious of 
need but not yet conscious of supply, the spirit cries 
out for a God who long before it knew its own want has 
been supplying that want with Himself. I think my 
prayer unanswered when really God not merely is an- 
swering it, but has been answering it for years, before 
ever it knew enough of itself to be prayed. 

One other thought must still be added: God is the 
Lord of all the world ; whatever goes on in the world 
goes on under His care. It would be awful if that fact 
made God careless of any, the least or feeblest of His 
children ; awful if all these thronging prayers, pouring 
in from Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and the islands 
of the sea, had it in their power to hinder or silence 
the feeblest fluttering petition which tried to find its 
way to God from any weakest child of His who after 
long hesitation and doubt has dared to pray. It is not 
that. But is it not easy to conceive that such a multi- 
tude of need may, likely enough, have influence upon 
the way in which that single petitioner's prayer re- 
ceives its answer, upon the form the answer shall 



The Silence of Christ. 



131 



assume ? If I prayed all alone, — my prayer the only 
prayer which pierced the darkness because mine was the 
only soul which stood in need, — then I can possibly 
imagine that as I stood and looked I should behold the 
answer come like a white dove out of the distance 
until it laid itself upon my soul and gave it peace 
But now I cannot help seeing what a far greater rich* 
ness there will be if my petition blends with a million 
others, and the answer comes in some great outpouring 
of the divine light and love which addresses itself to all 
the world. It seems to me almost like this : You write 
your letter to your friend, and straightway there comes 
back his reply. Thin, narrow, limited, a transaction 
purely between you and him, getting part of its value 
from its specialness and limitation, is your correspond- 
ence. But suppose your letter is one of a thousand 
which reaches this great helpful friend of you all ; and 
suppose that by some great act done out in the broad 
face of the sun, or by some mighty book which speaks 
like a trumpet from a mountain-top, he answers you all 
together, — you all and a host besides, — tell me, are 
not you answered, you whose prayer started and soared 
out of a special closet on a certain day? Will you say 
almost peevishly, " Nay, but I wanted my own answer 
all to myself " ? Is not that selfish and weak ? May 
not the very richness of this larger answer have it for 
one of its purposes to rebuke that selfishness and let 
you know that he best finds God and is God's who finds 
Him and becomes His, not in separation from his 
brethren but in the certainty of God's love to all and 
of the belonging of all souls to God? 



132 



The Silence of Christ. 



I must not follow farther these suggestions of the 
seeming silences of God. I never think of them with- 
out thinking how great is the delight which comes when 
any man discovers that God really has been answering 
him all the time when he thought that his prayers were 
ill unheard. That must be one of the most exquisite 
joys of heaven. Among the vials which in the Book 
of Revelations held the prayers of saints, there must be 
some which, when the saints who prayed them find them 
in their vision-time, shine with a brilliancy supremely 
precious. They are the prayers which seemed as if they 
were not answered, but which really did bring down their 
blessing. When we do really see them and know their 
history, two things will become very real to us about all 
prayer : First, that not the gift but the giver is the real 
answer to prayer ; not to get God's benefactions, but to 
get God, is the soul's true answer. And second, that the 
faith which comes by the assurance that God must have 
answered is often a nobler culture of the soul than even 
the delightful thrill of the heard answer as it enters 
into our ears, or the warm pressure of the blessing it- 
self, held tight in our tremulous and grateful hand. 
May both of these assurances come to all of us when we 
pray to God, and yet it seems as if He sent us no reply. 
Often those days of bewilderment and disappointment 
are the birthdays of faith. 

But now that we may reach the second part of our 
topic, shall we not come back to the poor woman who 
stands before the silent Saviour in that unknown spot 
in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon? It was no apparent 
silence which she had to confront. The blessed lips 



The Silence of Christ. 



133 



were really closed; the blessed hands really did not 
move with any gesture of bestowal. " He answered her 
not a word," — that is the story which His servant 
tells. 

And is there anything like that in the experience of 
J esus which comes to souls to-day ? Indeed there is ! 
Many and many a prayer there is which not merely 
Christ does not seem to answer, — which Christ does 
not answer. Let us think of such prayers a while. Let 
us see to what classes they belong, and what ought to 
be the teaching of their lack of answer to our souls. 

Some prayers Christ does not answer, we may say, 
because they ask Him to do our work for us. They ask 
Him to do what we ought to do for ourselves. Tell 
me, is there a kinder thing that you can do for your 
pupil who comes up to you with his slate, asking you 
to work out for him his problem, than to bid him go 
back to his seat and do his task himself, and get that 
discipline and learning which is really the object of his 
having his task set to him at all, — the object of his 
being in the school ? You ask Christ to show you with 
a flash of lightning what your sorrow means. You ask 
him to decide for you and to reveal to you by some su- 
pernatural illumination which path of life you ought to 
take, which friendship you shall cultivate, what profes- 
sion you can most successfully pursue. There comes no 
answer to those prayers. The Christ to whom you pray 
answers you not a word. And why ? Those are your 
problems. It is by hard work of yours, by watchful 
vigilance, by careful weighing of consideration against 
consideration, that you must settle those things for 



134 



The Silence of Christ. 



yourself. Still, if you are wise and devout, you will not 
fail to say, " God showed me it ! " when you have really 
found out the answer by the use of your own powers ; 
for where did those powers get their enlightenment ex~ 
cept from Him ? But the first prompt, definite answer 
which your prayer expected never comes. It is with- 
held because the same God who is ready to do His work 
for you demands that you should do your own. 

Closely united with this, and coming also very near 
to the story of the poor woman, there is the truth that 
Christ does not answer many a petition because the pe- 
titioner is not able to appropriate and understand the 
answer. Yery often, as I said before, the sense of 
need becomes developed in advance of the ability to 
take in the supply. You see a group of people enjoy- 
ing intensely some great work of art. You cannot see 
its beauty ; but as you hear them talk there wakens in 
you some dim sense that it is beautiful, and that for 
you not to see its beauty is in you a sad defect and loss. 
You speak to them and say, " Explain to me this beauty 
and make me feel it. " They look into your face, and 
answer you not a word. They see that it is hopeless. 
You need so much before this need can be supplied. 
They cannot answer this prayer till many another has 
been prayed and answered. Is not the same thing true 
of Christ ? Some youth upon the street in J erusalem 
meets Him as He walks among the disciples and, see- 
ing the intelligence and peace and joy which fills their 
faces, appeals to the Master and says, " Lord do for me 
what thou hast done for them," and then expects the 
fulness of the blessing instantly. It does not come. 



The Silence of Christ 



135 



And why ? He is not ready. It cannot come. He 
must be John or Peter before the Lord can do John's or 
Peter's work in him. And so the Lord looks him in 
the face, and answers him not a word. 

One other cause there is for silence when we pray, and 
that is the largeness of God's kingdom. I have spoken 
of it already, but here it comes in again. Two friends 
come to me together, one of them wants me to go with 
him for a pleasant walk ; the other wants me to come 
and rescue his child from some most imminent and 
dreadful danger. I do not hesitate a moment. I turn 
away from him who wants me to walk with him and 
hurry off to save, if it is possible, the child's imperilled 
life. And if he be the man he ought to be, my walk- 
ing friend will thank me for denying his request, 
would have no respect for me if out of foolish fondness 
I let the poor child die in order that I might get with 
him the freshness of the autumn breeze or the glory of 
the mountain view. He will recognize my greater re- 
sponsibility. He will see my larger kingdom. Now 
God is not limited exactly thus. He is above all time, 
and so has all time for His own. He has time enough 
for all His children; but there may be other kinds of 
complications. In many ways it may be impossible 
that what 1 ask should be done without the sacrifice of 
something else which is of far more importance con- 
cerning some special brother's life, or concerning the 
vast world at large. What then ? Shall I not rejoice 
in my unanswered prayer ? Shall I not be thoroughly 
glad that my petition goes to One who will leave it un- 
answered if there are greater things which the answer- 



136 



The Silence of Christ. 



ing of it would hinder, or if in my blindness I have 
asked something which for myself would be not good 
but evil ? Who is there that would dare to pray at all 
if he had not that assurance ? Who has not felt some- 
times as if the face of Christ was never so gracious or 
won from us such perfect trust as when He simply 
looked on us in silence and answered not a word. 

Thus we detail a few of those conditions in which God 
does not answer prayer. They are but specimens and 
instances. There are a great many others. And now, 
as I stand and look abroad across them all, they all 
give me one great impression. That impression is, 
that none of them are necessarily condemned to act as 
discouragements of the soul which prays and whose 
prayer goes unanswered. I think that that is very 
strange. Go back to our poor Canaanitish woman once 
again. Look at her ! See what she does when Jesus 
gives her no reply ! Does she turn off in despair ? 
Does she go away in anger? Does she say, "He is 
not for me," and leave Him to His Hebrew follow- 
ers ? Not so ! In the sweet melody of the old 
verses we can feel her pressing more closely to Him 
through the silence which He has drawn about Him like 
a veil. " Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, 
* Lord help me. ' " And she said, " Truth, Lord, yet the 
dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the master's 
table." Behold her undiscouraged faith! Nay, is it not 
much more than that ? Not merely she clings to Him 
in spite of His silence. Do we not feel that somehow 
it is His very silence through which as through a rich 
revealing glass she looks in on His nature, and sees 



The Silence of Christ. 



137 



what is truly He ? At any rate all the story lets us see 
clearly how the result is that she is led on to Him. 
Behind His gifts, which were what she first came 
seeking, she is led in to Him. 

My friends, do we know anything of that experience ? 
Do we know anything of what it is to take refuge from 
Christ's silence in Christ Himself ? If we do not, there 
are great depths of our religion still waiting for our 
souls to sound. You cry, " 0 Lord, solve me this prob- 
lem ! " and the solution does not come. " What ! must 
I walk in darkness ? " your poor soul cries out ; and 
then He comes and takes your hand and says, "He 
that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall 
have the Light of Life." In place of the answer to 
your prayer comes He to whom you prayed. You have 
not got the solution of your problem; it still floats 
in doubt. You have not got the sure prophecy of the 
future; it is hid behind the wavering and trembling 
veil. You have not got the brother's dear presence 
for whose life you cried and wrestled; he is walking 
beside the river of Life in the new Light of Heaven. 
You have not got what you prayed for, but you have got 
God! You have the source, the fountain, the sun! 
You have taken hold of the essential meaning and es- 
sence of all these things for which you prayed, in tak- 
ing hold of Him to whom you prayed. In His silence 
you have pressed back to Him. If He had spoken, you 
might have rested in His words. Now you have 
pressed back to Him. Not in the word He speaks but 
in the word He is, you have found your reply. 

It is in the silences of Nature that we are often sensi- 



138 



The Silence of Christ 



ble of being most near to Nature's heart. Not when 
the thunder is roaring, nor when the winds are sighing, 
but in some hour of the morning or the evening when 
even the distant song of a bird seems an intrusion, 
when the silence of Nature grows a transparent veil 
which reveals and does not hide her loveliness, — ■ then 
is the time when you know how lovely Nature is ! It is 
in the silence of a great city ; not in the noisy clashing 
noontide of its furious business, but in the solemn 
midnight when the hush is over all its streets, — then 
it is that the heart of the city opens to you, and you feel 
to the full its mystery and awe and delight. And is it 
not true about the men whom you have known best that 
the times when you have sat or walked side by side 
with them in silence, have often been the times when 
you have known them most deeply and most truly ? 

Is it strange that the same thing should be true of 
Christ ? If my brethren, who are my equals, have each 
some sacred chamber in his nature which only silence 
and not speech can open and reveal, shall I think it 
strange that Christ, in the completeness of His life, 
should many a time meet my especial petition with 
silence because so, and so only, can He let me see Him- 
self, which is the purpose of all His treatment of me. 
We glorify talk overmuch. We meet a man and ask 
him countless questions. " Where was he born ? Who 
were his father and mother ? Where was he educated? 
What does he believe ? " And so we try to know him. 
He answers us the best he can. He means to keep 
back nothing. But when his answers are all in, and I 
have registered them in my book, and analyzed them. 



The Silence of Christ 



139 



and arranged them, do I know the man ? And then i r, 
some crisis or emergency, or on some sunny day which 
is like hundreds of others in his life, I just sit in his 
presence, and he says nothing to me, and the result is 
that I get up and go away at evening full of the knowl- 
edge of what manner of man he is. 

"Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on 
the ground as though He heard them not. " So Christ 
revealed Himself to the furious Jews who were howling 
for the life of the poor woman whom they had caught 
in her sin. When Pilate said to him, " Hearest Thou 
not how many things they witness against Thee ? 
Jesus answered him to never a word; insomuch that 
the governor marvelled greatly." So the Prisoner re- 
vealed Himself to His amazed and frightened judge. 
By silence often of necessity and not by speech He must 
make Himself known, because the revelation is too great 
for words to contain; because the hearer cannot hold the 
truth and yet, by his strange human capacity, can hold 
Him who speaks the truth, Him who is the truth ; be- 
cause words sometimes hide instead of revealing what 
they try to tell, — for all these reasons the Lord often 
when we pray to Him answers us not a word. 

Oh, my friends, our answered prayers are precious to 
us ; I sometimes think our unanswered prayers are more 
precious still. Those give us God's blessings ; these, 
if we will, may lead us to God. Do not let any mo- 
ment of your life fail of God's light. Be sure that 
whether He speaks or is silent, He is always loving 
you, and always trying to make your life more rich and 
good and happy. Only be sure that you are always ready ! 



IX. 



HOW TO ABOUND. 

I know how to abound. — Phil. iv. 12. 

Saint Paul is rejoicing in a double knowledge. " I 
know both how to be abased and how to abound," he 
says. The experience of want and the experience of 
abundance, both of them he understands, and he is 
ready to meet either of them. It is of the second of 
his two kinds of knowledge that I want to speak to you 
to-day; but the two are not distinctly separable from 
one another. No man can have one kind of knowledge 
and be wholly destitute of the other. Just as no man 
knows how to rule who is not able also to obey ; and no 
man knows how to obey without being also ready to 
command, — so the man who is truly wise in poverty 
would be wise also in wealth; and he who is most 
truly fit for wealth would not fail if poverty should 
come upon him. Thus each condition becomes in some 
sort a test of the other. There is one great philosophy 
which covers both. Let us try to remember this as we 
think this morning about knowing how to be rich. " I 
know how to abound, " says Paul. 

It often seems as if men had more than enough in- 
struction as to how they ought to meet adversity, but far 
too little as to how to meet prosperity. As if that were 



How to Abound. 



141 



so easy ! As if success could take care of itself ! Nor 
does the prosperous and affluent man know his own 
need ! A hundred poor men come and say, " Show me 
what all this means. Tell me how shall I live in pov- 
erty and not grow wretched, sour, cruel, hopeless." 
Hardly one comes to God or fellowman, and with his 
hands overrunning with good things cries, " 0 help me 
to escape my dangers ! Show me how to abound ! " Our 
Litany, indeed, does make men think. " In all time of 
our tribulation, in all time of our prosperity, good 
Lord deliver us, " it bids us pray. As those words fall 
upon his ear, the rich, abundant man must sometimes 
look up almost in surprise, and see the dangers of his lot 
in life staring at him through the silken curtains ; but 
at most times the curtains hang ample and smooth and 
quiet, and no fear disturbs them. " Hard enough to get 
rich, " men will say, " but very easy to be rich. Tell 
me how to win prosperity, and I will not ask anybody to 
tell me how to use it. " 

And perhaps it is just because affluence does not 
seem to bristle with dangers as poverty does, that it 
seems often to many people to be an inferior, almost an 
unjustifiable condition for a noble man. It seems to 
afford no chance of moral heroism. It looks sleek and 
self-satisfied. The sweet moral uses of adversity mo- 
nopolize our thought. To throw away wealth and pro- 
fusion, to tarn ascetic, to disparage learning, to isolate 
one's life from the pleasant association of family and 
friends, — we all know how this has seemed to many men, 
to many noble men, to many groups and generations of 
men not destitute of lofty aspirations, to be the first 



142 



How to Abound. 



condition of high spiritual character, — the making of 
life bare and meagre. It is a strange confusion. The 
idea seems to be that a man ought to throw away wealth 
and luxury because they make life too easy. Really it 
is throwing away wealth and luxury because they make 
life hard, because in them the chance of deep and spirit- 
ual life is beset by many mysterious and subtle dangers, 
over the conquest of which alone can man go forward to 
his best. Surely there is a braver, a franker, and a 
nobler way. Surely the man who takes his wealth or 
privilege and keeps it and learns how to live in it and 
use it and conquer its dangers by continual watchful- 
ness and care, — surely he has done work more worthy 
of respect than any monk or ascetic in the cell or cave 
to which his coward life has fled. 

You will not think of me that I stand here as a Chris- 
tian minister before a congregation in which there are 
many people who are rich, simply trying to feed their 
self-complacency, to congratulate them upon their lot. 
I am not so mean as that. If there are men and women 
here whose lives are full of privilege, it is not my place 
to bid them throw their privilege away ; it is not my 
place to tell them that their privilege is wrong; but 
my duty surely is to remind them of the dangers and 
responsibilities which privilege involves, and to exhort 
them as earnestly as I can to think and pray and study 
that they may " know how to abound. " 

The phrase is very simple. Behind the duty of being 
anything, lies the deeper duty of knowing how to be that 
thing in the best way and to the best result. I meet 
a man who says, "My fellow-citizens have chosen me 



How to Abound. 



143 



to such and such an office." His face is all aglow with 
triumph. He has won the victory. He has carried the 
election. How quickly the question starts up in my 
mind — " Does this man know how to govern \ He is 
going to sail the ship of State. Does he know anything 
about such navigation? Woe to the State if he does 
not ! " " Woe to thee, O Land, when thy king is a child," 
says the wise preacher. Another man is proud that he 
is a father; but he has evidently not got hold of the 
first ideas of fatherhood, of its sacred ness and serious- 
ness and far outreach. There are officers in every great 
army who have the commission but have not the knowl- 
edge, and they are the officers whose men are sacrificed 
in reckless ventures. The priest is made by ordination, 
but the knowledge how to be a priest comes only by 
prayer and study and the grace of God. JSTo man has 
a right to be anything unless he is conscious that he 
knows how to be it. Not with a perfect knowledge, for 
that can come only by the active exercise of being the 
thing itself, but at least no man has a right to be any- 
thing unless he carries already in his heart such a sense 
of the magnitude and the capacity of his occupation as 
makes him teachable by experience for all that his 
occupation has to make known to him. 

How the strict application of our rule would depopu- 
late our industries and professions ! How it would bid 
the king come down off of his throne, and the judge off 
of his bench ! How many fathers and mothers it would 
depose from their sacred seat at the head of the family ! 
How it would beckon many a priest out of his pulpit, 
many an author from his desk, many a teacher from his 



144 



How to Abound. 



school-room, many a merchant from his counting-house, 
many a mechanic from his bench ! Every man who is 
satisfied with being anything, and is not trying to know 
how to be that thing as well as it is possible to be it, 
this law would summon to resign and leave his place 
for larger, more earnest, more conscientious men ! This 
is the law which Paul suggests with regard to abund- 
ance. Wealth is a condition, a vocation, he declares. 
A man may have the condition and not have, not even 
seek to have, the knowledge of how to live in that con- 
dition. Go to, ye rich men, and learn how a rich man 
ought to live. 

I talk of wealth as if it were synonymous with Paul's 
word " abundance ; " but no doubt the word as he uses it 
means much more than what we generally understand 
by wealth. He is thinking of any plentiful supply of 
life, of anything which makes life sumptuous and ample. 
Plenty of learning, so that the mind is nowhere starved ; 
plenty of friends, so that the affections are all satisfied ; 
plenty of peace and spiritual comfort and certain faith 
and enthusiastic inspirations, — all of these may be in- 
cluded in his great word, "to abound." Not only to 
the man of money, but to the man of scholarship, to the 
popular man, to the man of great spiritual hopes and 
enjoyments, — to all of them his words suggest that 
there is something more needed than to have these 
great possessions, even to know how to have them, to be 
worthy of them, to be able to get the real heart and 
substance of their value out of having them. 

He did not certainly have all these things himself, 
but one of the subtlest and profoundest suggestions 



How to Abound. 



145 



which his words contain is this, that as a man may 
have the things and yet lack the knowledge how to use 
them, so on the other hand, a man may lack the things 
and yet possess the knowledge of them, — the knowl- 
edge of their nature and their use. Paul, a poor man, 
nevertheless says, " I have the best part of money still, 
— the knowledge of what money is, and what a true man 
ought to do with money. " Some secret he possessed by 
which he unlocked the heart of wealth, even although 
his lot in life was almost abject poverty. That is a 
very lofty mastery indeed. 

And now is it possible for us to put our finger upon 
this mysterious knowledge of Saint Paul, and say exactly 
what it was ? I think we can. It must have been a 
Christian knowledge. He is speaking, as he always 
speaks, distinctly as a Christian. Remember he be- 
came a Christian not later probably than thirty-five 
years after the birth of Christ. He wrote this epistle 
to the Phillippians as late as the sixty-fifth year of the 
Christian Era. It was then after thirty years of Chris- 
tian life that he professed this knowledge. Thirty 
years had passed since he first saw his Master, J esus, on 
the road to Damascus. Thirty years of consecration, 
thirty years of ever-deepening communion with his 
Lord, thirty years of the profoundest consciousness of 
his own soul. If we sum up those thirty years in one 
great phrase what shall we say of them but this, — that 
Paul had learned in them the true perfection of a human 
soul in serving Christ. All knowledge for him had be- 
come summed up in that, — the true perfection of a 
human soul in serving Christ! 

10 



146 



How to Abound. 



And now imagine that to his meagre life there had 
been brought the sudden prospect of abundance. " To- 
morrow, Paul, a new world is to be opened to you. 
You shall be rich; you shall have hosts of friends; 
your struggles shall be over; you shall live in peace. 
Are you ready for this new life ? Can your feet walk 
strong and sure and steady in this new land so differ* 
ent from any land where they have ever walked be- 
fore ? " What will Paul's answer be ? " Yes, I have 
Christ, I know my soul in Him. I am His servant. 
Nothing can make me leave Him. With the power of 
that consecration I can rob abundance of its dangers 
and make it the servant of Him and of my soul. I 
shall not be its slave ; it shall be mine. I will walk at 
liberty because I keep His commandments. " So in the 
words which David had spoken long ago might Paul 
reply. The power by which he could confidently ex- 
pect to rob abundance of its dangers and to call out all 
its help was the knowledge of the true perfection of a 
human soul in serving Christ. 

Let us turn quickly from Saint Paul to ourselves. 
Let us take one by one the different kinds of abundance 
of which we spoke, and see how it is true that over each 
of them a man would win the mastery who carried into 
it the secret of Saint Paul, — the knowledge of the true 
perfection of a human soul in serving Christ ; how such 
knowledge would certainly be the power he would need. 

Take then, first, the simplest of all the meanings 
of abundance, which is wealth, — the ownership o 
riches. Do all rich men know how to be rich ? He 
does not know how to do anything who does that thing 



How to Abound. 



147 



so that he brings it to its worst and not its best results. 
Is that not true ? A man does not know how to sail a 
ship who steers it so that when it ought to go to Liver- 
pool he brings it into Madagascar. Where is the ship 
of wealth then meant to sail ? Her port is clear and 
certain, — to generosity and sympathy and fineness of 
nature and healthy use of powers. What shall we say 
then of the man whose money makes him selfish and 
cruel and coarse and idle, or any one of these bad 
things. There are many hard names which we may 
call him by, but the real philosophy of the whole mat- 
ter, the comprehensive definition of it all is this, — he 
does not know how to be rich ! He is a blunderer in a 
great art. Look at his opposite. Look at the man who 
takes money into the easy mastery of his character. 
His selfhood, which is his character, appropriates it. 
He makes it part of him. The richer that he grows 
the more generous and sympathetic and fine and active 
he becomes. What can you say of him but that he 
does know how to be rich. I say of a man that he 
knows how to travel when he makes each new country, 
as he enters it, open its secrets and render up to him 
new interest and knowledge. I say of a man that he 
does not know how to swim when the water takes pos- 
session of him and drowns him in itself. So I say that 
a man does not know how to be rich when his money 
makes him its slave, and turns him into a coarseness 
like itself instead of being elevated and refined by the 
commanding spirituality of his human soul. 

There is certainly a very terrible aspect to a sight like 
this, — an aspect of it that makes one very angry, that 



148 



How to Abound. 



sometimes stirs up a whole class or city-full of poor 
men who seem to themselves to be wronged by the rich 
man's ignorant and stupid use of wealth, to rage and 
violence. There is certainly another way of looking at 
it in which it is most pathetic. For what can be more 
pitiable than the condition of a blunderer who holds in 
his hands the power of such happiness and good and 
usefulness as money gives, and knows not what to do 
with it ? The failure may take various forms. It may 
deck itself with gaudy tinsel, and shine in the extrava- 
gance of gold and diamonds ; or it may clothe itself in 
the false sackcloth of miserliness. It may affect frivol- 
ity, or affect severity. The failure is the same in either 
case. In either case an infinitely pathetic object is the 
rich man who has not known how to be rich. 

And now what is the lacking knowledge ? Certainly 
not something which any schools to which the man 
might have gone could possibly have taught. We not 
merely cannot find, we cannot picture to our imagina- 
tion, any college which among its other courses should 
have one course which should teach men how to be 
rich, how to live worthily in wealth. Only the col- 
lege of life could teach that fine and difficult and lofty 
art ; and in the college of life more than in any other 
university everything depends upon the spirit and 
teachableness of the student himself. But in that col- 
lege there is one lesson which every right-spirited and 
docile student ought to learn. It is the mystery of liv- 
ing, and the supremacy of some great power on which 
life depends, and the need of obedience to God That 
lesson is the purpose for which the college of life exists. 



How to Abound. 



149 



Its professors are the solemn events which come to 
every man. Its text-books are the histories of men, 
whose leaves and chapters are the passing years. Its 
halls are the several businesses and relationships in 
which men are engaged. In that great college, sacred 
with the accumulations of generations of learning men, 
the great central lesson must be learned that humanity 
is not its own, but God's; and that to glorify God and 
to enjoy Him forever is the chief end of man. We may 
not say that sympathy with fellow-man and the desire 
to help him is the world's lesson. That is one of its 
subordinate sciences, one of its necessary departments, 
but only one. " The fear of the Lord is the beginning 
of wisdom ; a good understanding have all they that do 
His commandments." That is the testimony of one of 
the profoundest students of this university of life, one 
of its most finished graduates, — David, the King of 
Israel, in his hundredth and eleventh Psalm. His son, 
King Solomon, a student of a different temper, but also 
no slight or superficial scholar, bore the same testi- 
mony in the same words in the first chapter of his Book 
of Proverbs. And what shall we say who stand by and 
look at rich men and their failures ? What will some 
of you who are rich men say, over whom as you are 
growing older there is creeping a most depressing sense 
that you have been all your life playing with your 
riches as a child plays with diamonds ? Are you not 
ready to say that if you could have carried from the first 
a deep strong sense of God, it would have been a point 
around which all your great melancholy, aimless, use- 
less fortune, all your inherited wealth which has simply 



150 



How to Abound. 



kept you all these years from doing anything in this 
busy world, would have crystallized into the most vigor- 
ous shapes of character and usefulness. If your whole 
soul had been full of that knowledge all these years, 
how you would have been the master of your money, 
and lifted your little corner of the world with it as a 
lever, instead of its being your master as it has been, 
and either crushing you down with the anxious care of 
it, or wearing you out with the aimless spending of it ; 
and it is hard to tell which of those two is worst. 

When Jesus said to the rich young man " Go and sell 
all that thou hast and give to the poor, " he had simply 
found a man who did not know how to be rich. There 
was nothing to do with that man but to send him back 
to the preparatory school of poverty. To make that 
special treatment of a single man the universal rule of 
human life would be to shut up one of the great higher 
schools of human character in sheer despair. Some- 
times perhaps a rich man feels that if he could get rid 
of his money he could be a strong and unselfish -man. 
It is the old delusion. The sinner in the tropics thinks 
he could be a saint at the North Pole. It is only that 
he knows how the sun burns, but has never felt how the 
frost freezes. There is a special strength and a partic- 
ular unselfishness which the rich man's wealth makes 
possible for him. It is his duty to seek after them, and 
never rest till he has found them ; not to make himself 
poor, but to know how to be rich is the problem of his 
life. 

These thoughts rise up in us with every outcry of 
poor men at the anomaly, — almost, some of the poor 



How to Abound. 



151 



would call it, the atrocity, — of some men being rich 
while other men are very poor. Such outcry there will 
always be ; but at its heart that which makes such an 
outcry pathetic, and that alone which makes it danger- 
ous, is that, often blindly and not able to understand 
or to define itself, it is an outcry not against rich men, 
but against rich men who do not know how to be rich. 
Always there will be angry protests against any man 
holding in any way, even the highest and most un- 
selfish, wealth which the man who protests has failed to 
reach ; but it is not this, — it is not wealth simply in 
itself, — it is the pride of wealth, the indifference of 
wealth, the cruelty of wealth, the vulgarity of wealth, 
in one great word the selfishness of wealth, which really 
makes the poor man's heart ache, and the poor man's 
blood boil, and constitutes the danger of a community 
where poor men and rich men live side by side. Let 
riches know " how to abound " and poverty will not lose 
its self-respect, and so will not struggle after the self- 
respect which it feels that it is losing, with frantic and 
tumultuous struggles. Oh, that every rich man and 
woman here might know this truth, and use it when 
their lives touch the sad and sore and hopeless lives of 
poor men at their side. 

I must pass rapidly on and say what little there is 
time to say upon the other three divisions of my subject. 
I said that there were other kinds of abundance besides 
wealth. Think, if you will, for a few moments, about 
the abundance of knowledge. How clearly we discover 
as we watch the lives of learned men that there is some- 
thing else needed besides the knowledge of truths ; there 



152 



How to Abound. 



is the knowledge of how to know truths, without which 
a very large part of learning is a waste and failure. 
Do you see what I mean ? Here is a scholar who has 
accumulated all the facts which it is possible for him 
to know about his special science. He knows them 
all. You cannot ask him for one of them that he does 
not instantly hold it out to you in his ready hand. 
Why is it that you do not feel any enrichment of mind, 
any enlargement of nature or character with all his 
wonderful acquirements ? Why is it that as he has 
grown more and more of an encyclopedia, he has grown 
less and less perhaps, certainly not more and more, of 
a man ? Why is it that with your ever-increasing won- 
der at what he knows, you have no increased respect for 
him ? He has no deep convictions. He has no strength- 
ened reason. Knowledge has come to him but wisdom 
has lingered ; not in a technical or special meaning, but 
in a deep and human sense he has no faith ! Or per- 
haps what strikes you still more is that his best and 
most helpful relations to his fellow-men have faded away 
in the thin air of his study. He has grown less hu- 
man as his learning has increased. His sympathies 
have dried up. He values his knowledge as the bot- 
anist values his flower, — for the curiousness of its 
structure ; not as the gardener values his flower, — for 
the richness of life which it contains. He prefers to 
press his flower in a heavy book, rather than to plant it 
in the warm and fructifying earth. 

What can we say of such a scholar but that he does 
not know how to know. There is a science of knowl- 
edge, as well as a science of fossils, and a science of 



How to Abound. 



153 



stars. The sacredness of all knowledge as the gift 
of God ; the unity of all knowledge as the utterance of 
God ; the purpose of all knowledge as the food of char- 
acter in the knower and the helper of humanity through 
him, — these are the great departments of that science. 
Sometimes we see a scholar who has learned them all, 
and what a new vision he gives us of the glory of schol- 
arship ! Men who know less than he do not begrudge 
or disparage his knowledge. The light that is in him 
is not darkness ; it lightens all his world. And oh, my 
friends, boys studying at college, men and women read- 
ing books and struggling so restlessly for culture, there 
is no way to fully win this highest knowledge, — the 
knowledge of how to know, — but in the service of the 
God of Light, who is also the God of Love, the God of 
Character, the God of Man. Any "idustrious man 
with a good brain and a good memory can know things 
if he will ; only the reverent and devoted man can know 
how to know. 

Or turn your thoughts to another sort of abundance 
— the abundance of friendship and acquaintances. 
"Happy the man of many friends," we say; but hardl) 
have we said it when we stop ourselves. So many of 
the men of many friends whom we have known have 
run to waste. So many of the popular men have been 
tyrannized over and ruined by their popularity. Their 
principles have crumbled; their selfhood has melted 
away ; they have become mere stocks and stones for fool- 
ish men to hang garlands on, not real men, real utter- 
ances of divine life, leading their fellow-men, rebuking 
sins, inspiring struggles, saving souls. 



154 



Hovj to Abound. 



Ah, yes! Not merely to make men love you and 
honor you, but to know how to be loved and honored 
without losing yourself and growing weak, — that is the 
problem of many of the sweetest, richest, most attractive 
lives ; and there is only one solution for it, which blessed 
indeed is he who has discovered ! To stiffen yourself 
against the praise and honor of your fellow-men, to make 
yourself insensible, to be a stoic and insist you will not 
care what men think of you, that is the base way of 
escape; that is as if a rich man escaped avarice by 
throwing his money in the sea, or as if a scholar escaped 
pedantry by laboriously forgetting all he knew. 

But if the much-beloved man can look up and demand 
the love of God ; if, catching sight of that, he can crave 
it and covet it infinitely above all other love ; if, laying 
hold of its great freedom, he can make it his, and know 
that he loves God, and know that God loves him, — 
then he is free. Then let him come back and take into 
a glowing heart the warmest admiration and affection 
of his brethren ; let him walk the earth with hosts of 
friends, the heaven that he carries in his heart pre- 
serves him. They cannot make him conceited, for he 
who lives with God must be humble. They cannot 
drown his selfhood, for the God he loves and serves is 
always laying upon him his own personal duties, and 
bringing the soul before its own judgment-seat every 
day. He who knows that God loves and honors him may 
freely take all other love and honor, however abundant 
they may be, and he will get no harm. All that is 
weak and foolish and unworthy in them, he will cast 
agide; all that is worthy he will take worthily. 



How to Abound. 



155 



And now I come to the last sort of abundance of 
which I wish to speak. It is that which belongs to the 
Christian experience. I speak to Christian men, — to 
those men who are living in the acknowledged and rec- 
ognized obedience of Christ. Sad is the Christian life 
to which there do not come times when the soul seems 
to be living in great spiritual abundance. The world 
of the soul grows rich; doubts disappear; faith be- 
comes easy ; the assurance of God is on every side ; the 
church overruns with helpfulness; trust is the happy 
instinct of the heart ; peace, like a great sun-lit ocean, 
receives the soul and soothes its anxieties and pains, 
and makes it think itself almost in heaven. Oh, those 
are very sacred days ! No other soul may know in what 
abundance you are living; but, in a joy too deep for 
songs, you live on, and no sorrow has the power to 
make you sorrowful. Then is the time, my friend, my 
Christian friend, when you do indeed need to know how 
to abound. For such times have their very deep and 
subtle dangers. Spiritual content, self-satisfaction, 
idleness, are waiting at the door ; and at the other door 
the powers of reaction, — fear which will feed upon the 
triumph of this very hope, distrust which will be all 
the stronger for this earnest faith, they too are waiting 
for their chance. Oh, critical moment of a Christian 
life! Then everything depends on whether you are 
wise enough to know that only by duty, only by some 
brave, self-sacrificing service of this Christ of whose 
love all your soul is full, can Christ's love come to be 
your permanent possession, and this peace and exalta- 
tion be made more than mere spiritual luxuries, — be 



156 



How to Abound. 



made indeed a true new life. Many a Christian has 
failed just there. Soon the great light, unused, has 
faded away and left the soul in darkness. Soon peace 
which was not vitalized to power has decayed to pride. 
Something of this kind has come, I think, to whole 
generations, to whole periods of Christianity. But see ! 
If you lift up your head, if you put out your hand and 
take your task, which certainly is waiting for you, then 
instantly your high emotions know their place. They 
turn themselves to motives. They become the neces- 
sary habits of the life. They prove their reality by what 
they can make you strong to do. No cloud can hide 
them from you, no Satan's hand can rob you of them, 
for they have entered in through the open door of your 
will, and have become a true part of you. 

If there are any of you, dear friends, to whom to-day, 
by the kind grace of God, peace and faith and vision 
are thus rich and real, I beg you to bestir yourself and 
make them yours forever by doing some great hard duty 
in their strength. That is the only way to keep them. 
Let no spiritual exaltation come to you without your lift- 
ing yourself up in its present power, and doing some 
work for God which in your weaker moments and lower 
moods has scared you with its difficulty. For duty is 
the only tabernacle within which a man can always 
make his home upon the transfiguration mountain. 

And so in each of these several departments of our 
life it is not enough that a man shall have attained abun- 
dance, he must also know how to abound in riches, in 
learning, in friendship, in spiritual privilege ; there is a 



How to Abound. 



157 



deeper knowledge which alone can fasten the treasure 
which you have won, and make it truly yours, and draw 
out its best use. What a great principle that is ! Under 
that principle, as I said, a man may even be the master 
of the heart and soul of some possessions whose form 
he does not own. I know that J esus, the poor man who 
walked through rich Jerusalem and had not where to 
lay his head, had still the key of all that wealth. He 
knew how to be rich, and so He was more master of 
the heart of riches than any of the rich men in the great 
houses, whose wealth was crushing them into misers, or 
dissipating their powers in frivolity. And so with you 
and me ; we cannot attain to all abundance in this one 
short life which is our only one, but if we can come 
to God and be His servants, the knowledge of how to be 
things which we shall never be may enter into us. In 
poverty we may have the blessing of riches ; in enforced 
ignorance the blessing of knowledge ; in loneliness the 
blessing of friendship ; and in suspense and doubt the 
blessing of peace and rest. 

Let me close all that I have said this morning with 
two exhortations. 

There are struggling men here, — men working day 
and night for the precious things which make life full 
and rich. Go on and struggle; only remember that 
your struggle will be worthless, however you may get 
the things you seek, unless you can get not merely the 
bodies of those things but their souls. This was 
Christ's exhortation, " Not for the meat which perish- 
eth but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting 



158 



How to Abound. 



life. " Be satisfied with no gain unless you can carry 
into its possession such a soul and spirit that it can 
make of you a better, a truer, and a larger man. 

And oh, my young friends, prosperous and happy, 
with life all full of hope and chance and light, go on 
and take the great abundance which God is offering 
you ; only do not dare to go on into it all until first you 
have prayed to God that He will make you know how 
to abound. Pray for new hearts, large hearts which 
shall be worthy of your privileges, and then go on and 
without a fear take them all ; for no lot is too rich for 
a soul that enters into it full of humility before God, 
and love for fellow-man, and a deep desire for holiness. 
So may you go on to all the blessings of full and happy 
lives. 



X. 



HOW TO BE ABASED. 
I know how to be abased. — Phil. iv. 12. 

I spoke to you last Sunday about knowing how to be 
rich. Let us think to-day about knowing how to be 
poor. Saint Paul declared that he had both kinds of 
knowledge, and certainly he had had the chance to win 
this last ; for his had been a life of poverty. First as 
the poor student, then as the poor missionary, he had 
never known what it was to live an easy life. He had 
met all the temptations, he had enjoyed all the oppor- 
tunities which hardship involves. He knew them from 
his personal experience. And after all, the knowledge 
of hardship and privation which comes from personal ex- 
perience, must always have a reality which cannot be- 
long to any other kind of knowledge of them. There is a 
way, a true way, — as I pointed out last Sunday, — in 
which a man may be able to say in the midst of his abun- 
dance, " I know how to live the life which is destitute of 
all this. " There is a central knowledge, a knowledge 
of the heart of things, a consecration to God who is the 
King and Heart of things, which makes it possible for 
one to know conditions in which he has never lived ; but 
still the supreme reality of personal experience remains. 
The poor man looks askance while the rich man talks to 



160 



How to be Abased. 



him about poverty. " Wait till you have tried it, " he 
says. And the rich man owns the rebuke to his theo- 
retical wisdom and is silent and almost ashamed. 
Nothing of this kind is there in Saint Paul. However 
we may have hesitated when he said, " I know how to 
abound, " when he says this other thing, " I know how 
to be abased, " we accept most cordially the self-asser- 
tion of a man who has come out of the midst of perse- 
cutions and disappointments and disasters and poverty, 
with a strength of character and a record of work which 
has been one of the great glories of the world. 

All men have owned that the knowledge which Paul 
claimed is not an easy one to win or keep. To know 
how to be poor ! Plenty of people there are who are set 
down to the hard lesson. Plenty of people — yes, all 
people, in different degrees and different ways — are led 
into some disappointment and abasement, but how few 
seem to stand in it evidently the stronger and the better 
for it. How few look when they are in it as if they un- 
derstood it, and come out of it as if it had done them 
good. Indeed, men's feeling with regard to the possi- 
ble blessing of adversity and trouble is, I think, very 
suggestive and significant. They know there is some 
secret hidden there, but it seems to be hidden so pro- 
foundly that it is almost hopeless to find it, and the 
effort to find it is most dangerous. Poverty seems to 
men to be like the old fabled sphinx, — a mysterious 
being who has in herself the secrets of life, but who 
holds them fast, and tells them only in riddles, and 
devours the brave, unfortunate adventurers who try to 
guess at the wisdom she conceals and fail. The result 



How to be Abased. 



161 



is that few men seek her wisdom voluntarily. It is 
only when all the other schools turn them out that they 
will go to hers. Her gifts of wisdom seem to be pos- 
sibly very rich, but actually very hard to win, and to be 
meant for single and exceptional souls rather than for 
the ordinary run of men. Is not this the feeling about 
the uses of adversity, — that, while probably the few 
very best men which the world has seen have been 
trained by disappointment, the general mass of the 
world's average virtue has been educated by success; 
that disappointment and difficulty make the officers, 
but prosperity makes the rank and file of the great hu- 
man army ; that while the best man in all the world to- 
day, probably, if we could find him, would prove to be a 
very poor man, — perhaps a man just on the brink of 
starvation, — it is the moderately comfortable classes of 
mankind in which you will find the highest level of good 
and comely living? If these are the ordinary judg- 
ments of mankind about the blessing of abasement, I 
think we ought to be interested in what Paul's words 
suggest about knowing how to be poor. 

And at the very outset, to come at once to the con- 
trolling idea of what we have to say, do we not feel in 
Saint Paul's words a certain tone and accent which con- 
vey to us some sort of idea that to him abasement, as he 
called it, was a positive thing, was not simply a condi- 
tion of privation, but was something definite and real, 
— something with a character and influences of its 
own; not merely a condition of being without some- 
thing, but a condition of being with, of being in, some- 
thing else ? You cannot imagine him as he writes 

1 1 



162 



How to be Abased. 



thinking of himself as one who is waiting outside of 
doors where he is wholly anxious to enter in, the cul- 
tivation which comes to him as he stands outside being 
only the negative education of patience. It is evidently 
a distinct region of life in which he finds himself, 
where so long as he lives there is a special harvest for 
him to reap which he could reap nowhere else. To rec- 
ognize the land in which he finds himself, and to reap 
the harvest which he finds waiting for him there, — that 
is the knowledge of how to be abased which Paul is 
thankfully claiming ; that is what all his life of abase- 
ment has given him. 

This appears in many of the words of Paul. He 
writes to the Corinthians, "I take pleasure in infirmi- 
ties, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in 
distresses for Christ's sake ; for when I am weak, then 
am I strong." There is a noble dignity about those 
words. They are not the words of one who is merely 
trying to console himself for the lack of comfort, and 
to hold out till comfort shall bestow itself upon him. 
They are the words of a man whom circumstances, 
which he knows to be the hands of God, have led into a 
certain life. He has not led himself there ; he has not 
chosen poverty ; he has not tried to be poor ; but being 
in that land of poverty, he looks about, and lo! it is 
not barren. It has pleasures, revelations, cultivations 
of its own. It has its own peculiar relationships to 
God. It is not necessary to say whether it is poorer or 
richer than the other land, the land of profusion and 
abundance. It is a true land by itself ; and Paul, who 
lives there, honors and respects it, and so it honors him 



How to be Abased. 



163 



and gives him freely its own peculiar strength ; and he 
stands in the midst of it and cries, " When I am weak, 
then am I strong. " 

Is there not here a true intelligible picture of the way 
in which a man may know how to be abased ? If it is 
possible to look upon a limited, restricted life as a cer- 
tain kind of life with its own peculiar chances and en- 
lightenments out of which a man, if he knows how, may 
get a character ; in which a man, if he knows how, may 
live a life which would be impossible elsewhere, — then 
certainly this limited, restricted life may win and hold 
an affectionate respect which is a positive thing and 
may be very strong and real. We need not be haunted 
with the demon of comparison ; we need not say whether 
the cultures and pleasures of abasement are greater or 
less than those of abundance ; enough that it has its 
own, peculiar to itself, and full of value. Life is a 
medal with two sides ; the other side, as we choose to 
call it, has its own image and superscription, and is not 
made up only of the depressions which are necessary to 
make the elevations on the face. Or change the figure : 
we live here in rocky New England. Surely there is 
something more to say of its harsh landscape than 
simply that it has not the palms of Egypt or the oranges 
of Florida. We need not talk of it or think of it in 
negatives. It has its own peculiar wealth of forest and 
pasture and pond; it has its own peculiar beauty of 
rocky ridges and broad sea-shore beaches; it has its 
own sky and soil and water ; and we who live here are 
not merely resigned to our New England life and cli- 
mate from necessity. We honor it and love it for its 



164 



How to be Abased. 



own intrinsic qualities. The pine-tree is as real a thing 
as the palm-tree. It does not be a pine-tree merely be- 
cause it cannot be a palm; and surety it has no com- 
plaint to make. This is the picture in my mind of the 
positive nature of a life of abasement which makes it 
worthy of honor and respect. 

Such an idea as this is not in any way inconsistent 
with the constant struggle of the abased and limited 
life toward profusion and enrichment. Each stage or 
kind of existence keeps the possibilities of its own char- 
acter, although it feels the impulse which is always 
moving it on toward another stage or kind of life. 
Boyhood is a positive thing while it lasts, although it 
is forever being carried on toward manhood. Rugged 
New England may still struggle to improve her soil and 
grow as near the palm-tree as she can, while still she 
treasures and honors the characteristics which her pres- 
ent condition has decreed. To honor the life you live 
in now and here for its intrinsic goodness, part of that 
goodness consisting in the fact that it may open into 
some more abundant life, so to hold within it in perfect 
balance contentment and hope together, — that cer- 
tainly must be the way for a man to get the best out of 
any stage of living. 

I shall venture to take again for the illustration and 
enforcement of what I have been saying, the same enu- 
meration of the departments of living which I used last 
Sunday. Abasement of life, like enrichment of life, is 
a term which may be applied to wealth or to learning 
or to friendships or to spiritual privilege. Let me 
speak of each. 



How to be Abased. 



165 



Here is the poor man then — in the most literal 
sense, the man who has not money ! His face and fig- 
ure is familiar enough. I rejoice to know that he is 
here this morning, and that I may speak to him to-day 
as I spoke last Sunday to his wealthier friend. I should 
be sorry indeed to be the minister of any church in 
which I might not speak to both. And how shall one 
speak to the poor man ? That must depend upon what 
the speaker thinks he sees in the poor man's face, 
upon what is the attitude in which the poor man stands 
toward life. What some of his possible attitudes to- 
ward life are, we know. To take the meanest first, he 
may be servile and cringing in the presence of a wealth 
some of whose overflowing crumbs he thinks that he 
can coax to fall into his lap ; or, with more spirit, he 
may be eagerly envious and jealous, over-estimating the 
unknown luxury of wealth, and restless so long as he 
must go without the things his richer neighbors have ; 
always in feverish struggle to be rich himself. Or, with 
the same cause working just the other way, he may de- 
spise the abundance which has not fallen to his lot. He 
may denounce wealth as wickedness ; he may grow bit- 
ter and morose, and talk about his poverty, which cer- 
tainly he has not deliberately chosen, as if it had 
somehow a sort of merit in itself. Now all these atti- 
tudes of the poor man toward life, different as they are 
from one another, have this in common, — that they are 
all shaped and controlled by the man's perpetual con« 
sciousness that he is not as rich as other men ; therefore 
they all have a touch of slavishness about them. If my 
neighbor's wealth keeps me in a condition of continual 



166 



How to be Abased. 



defiance, I am as much the slave of it as if it kept me 
in a condition of continual obsequience. It controls 
my life. It decides what I shall be, and interferes 
with my self -decision ; and that is slavery. 

But now suppose that some bright day of freedom 
comes, — some day when I forget comparisons and do not 
think whether my neighbor is richer or poorer than I. 
Still I am just as poor as I was before. Still all the posi- 
tive condition of my poverty remains, but now it is posi- 
tive not negative, not relative ; and so it has a chance to 
show me its true character. A rugged, barren land it is 
to live in still, — a land where I am thankful very often 
if I can get a berry or a root to eat; but living in it 
really, letting it bear witness to me of itself, not dis- 
honoring it all the time by judging it after the stand- 
ards of the other lands, gradually there come out its 
qualities. Behold ! no land like this barren and naked 
land of poverty could show the moral geology of the 
world. See how the hard ribs which make the stony 
structure of the planet stand out strong and solid. No 
life like poverty could so get one to the heart of things 
and make men know their meaning, could so let us feel 
life and the world with all the soft cushions stripped off 
and thrown away. No life like poverty could call out 
such need for struggle. Poverty makes men come 
very near each other, and recognize each other's human 
hearts ; and poverty, highest and best of all, demands and 
cries out for faith in God. Not with a greater need, 
but with a more ready consciousness of need, than 
wealth, it turns in the destitution of external things to 
the internal, to the spiritual, to the eternal, to God. 



How to be Abased. 



167 



Now it is not right to think of these things as mere 
mitigations of a lot whose real intrinsic quality is that 
it is not wealthy. On the contrary, they themselves 
make a lot with its own qualities, with a value of its 
own. Do you quietly laugh and say, "At least, how- 
ever fine you may make them sound as you describe 
them, no man would ever see in them such a value that 
he would be poor for the sake of living the life which 
those things make " ? The answer is, " Men have done 
it. Men of other races, other standards, other natures 
than yours have deliberately chosen poverty because it 
seemed to make the richest and most honorable life. 
And men of all races, of all times, who have not chosen 
it but have been led into it by God, have found when 
they had come there a true life which satisfied them. " 

I know how superficial and unfeeling, how like mere 
mockery, words in praise of poverty may seem. I am 
not taunting the poor man by telling him that it is bet- 
ter to be poor. God forbid ! But I am sure that the 
poor man's dignity and freedom, his self-respect and 
energy, depend upon his cordial knowledge that his 
poverty is a true region and kind of life with its own 
chances of character, its own springs of happiness, and 
revelations of God. Let him resist the characterless- 
ness which often comes with being poor. Let him in- 
sist on respecting the condition where he lives. Let 
him learn to love it so that by and by when he grows 
rich he shall go out of the low door of the old familiar 
poverty with a true pang of regret, and with a true 
honor for the narrow home where he has lived so long, 
and which he leaves to other men. We know that such 



168 



How to be Abased. 



a reverence of the poor man for his poverty is possible ; 
for men enough whom we could name have borne in- 
dubitable testimony that they have felt it. Sometimes 
it has been almost elevated and incorporated into a re 
ligion. We know that any man who truly feels that 
reverence for his own poverty is thereby liberated from 
the worst part of the slavery to wealth. He may still 
struggle to be rich, but he is not the slave of other 
men's riches nor of his own unwon wealth for which he 
strives. Calm, dignified, self-respectful, with no bit- 
terness and no pride, — who but he is the man who 
knows how to be abased ? 

I must pass on and speak about the way in which a 
man may know how to be poor in learning. That was 
our second point. There are many of us who need that 
knowledge, — many of us who before we have got well 
into life see what a great world learning is, and also 
see for a certainty how hopeless it is that we shall ever 
do more than set our feet upon its very outermost bord- 
ers. Some life of practical duty claims us ; some career 
of business all made up of hard details, sharp, clear, 
inexorable, each one requiring to be dealt with on the 
instant, takes possession of us and holds us fast, and 
the great stream of learning into which we long to 
plunge and swim sweeps by our chained feet and we can 
only look down into its tempting waters and sigh over 
our fate. How many practical men — men who seem 
to be totally absorbed and perfectly satisfied in their 
busy life — really live in this discontent at being shut 
out from the richness of learning. Is there a right way 
and a wrong way, a wise way and a foolish way of liv- 



How to be Abased. 



169 



ing in that discontent ? Indeed there is. The foolish 
ways are evident enough. The unlearned man who by 
and by is heard sneering at learning, glorifying ma- 
chineries, boasting that he sees and wants to see no 
visions and that he never theorizes, — he has not known 
how to be ignorant. He has let his ignorance master 
and overcome him. It has made him its slave. The 
man who, the more he became conscious of his hopeless- 
ness of great scholarship, has grown more and more 
sensible of what a great thing it is to be a scholar ; and 
at the same time, by the same process, has grown more 
and more respectful toward his own side of life, more 
and more conscious of the value of practical living as a 
true contribution to the great final whole; the man 
therefore who has gone on his way, as most of us have 
to do, with little learning, but has also gone on his way 
doing duty faithfully, developing all the practical skill 
that is in him, and sometimes, just because their de- 
tails are so dark to him, getting rich visions of the gen- 
eral light and glory of the great sciences, seen afar off, 
seen as great wholes, which often seem to be denied to 
the plodders who spend their lives in the close study of 
those sciences, — he is the man who knows how to be 
unlearned. It is a blessed thing that there is such a 
knowledge possible for overworked, practical men. The 
man who has that knowledge may be self-respectful in 
the face of all the colleges. He may stand before the 
kings of learning and not be ashamed; for his lot is 
as true a part of life as theirs, and he is bravely hold- 
ing up his side of that great earth over which the plans 
of God are moving on to their completeness. 



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How to be Abased. 



And next we speak about the destitution of friend- 
ships, which is the appointed life of many people. Is 
it a hard thing to know how to be poor in, perhaps al- 
most destitute of, cordial associations with our fellow- 
men ? " Let them pass me by ! I know well enough 
how to do without their help or their society ! " Who 
has not heard those scornful words coming out of the 
hot lips of some angry man, and been sure, as he heard 
them, that the man who spoke them did not know the 
very thing which he boasted that he knew so well. 
For, as I said last Sunday, no man knows how to do 
a thing, who does it so that it makes him a worse 
and not a better man. We say that society is a fine 
art. It may be true that solitude is a finer. To get 
along with our fellow-men seems often very hard, but 
to get along without them seems impossible. 

But let me suppose that somewhere in these pews this 
morning is a man or woman whose life seems in some 
strange, marked way to have been left out of the great 
currents of humanity. Perhaps your very earliest days 
were without the protection of a father's and a mother's 
care; no circle of friends received you into the warm 
world of its hospitality ; your own nature has not been 
such as has easily attracted friendship ; your business 
has been of some solitary sort; and besides all these 
things, what we call accident has seemed to always 
break every crystallization just as it was being formed. 
Not even the church has seemed to gather your life into 
the natural and cordial society of other lives; so you 
have lived alone. Years, years ago you must have 
found what a problem had been set you in that iso- 



How to be Abased. 



171 



lated life. You must have seen that as it offered you 
temptations and dangers, so it offered you also chances 
of its own. You must have seen that, without disparag- 
ing the social life wnich opened to other men more 
readily than it did to you, without ceasing to keep your- 
self ready for it if it came, tnere still were certain 
valuable things which, while it did not come, were 
peculiarly within the power of your solitude. Whether 
you have attained those valuable things or not, you can 
at least imagine what they are. Can you not picture 
to yourself a man who, shut out by any circumstances 
from most active contact with his fellow-men, became 
thereby a watcher of the universal human life in such a 
way, from such a point of view, that he saw it more 
truly than if he were in the very heart of its whirl and 
movement ? A wiser insight, a larger knowledge of 
mankind, a broader vision of the significance and, one 
may say, of the glory of human life may surely come to 
him who looks at it, as it were, sympathetically from 
the outside, as a true man, and yet in some degree as a 
spectator of humanity. The planet Mars shines for us 
with a light which no citizen of Mars can see. 

And then something more may come. The man thus 
gazing upon life may see in the larger aspects which 
are given to him, revelations of God. The Great King 
may show Himself to one who gazes with such thought- 
ful and broad view at His Kingdom. And then, having 
seen the King and loved Him, the watchful man may 
come back to the Kingdom which first revealed that 
King, and love it for His sake. Here is a noble and 
natural and beautiful progress. I am sure that it has 



172 



How to be Abased. 



made the charm and strength of many men who have 
seemed somehow to be rather spectators of life than 
themselves deeply involved in the complexity of living. 
They have often been men who have loved their race 
with the deepest and the largest love. The enthusiasm 
of humanity often has seemed strong in them just in 
proportion as their lives had little contact with the per- 
sonal lives around them, and it has come about through 
God. The large sight of the world has first led them 
to Him, and then from Him they have come back to 
love His Kingdom. 

Now here is something which is much more than 
compensation and consolation. It is not a reward 
given by pity to make up for the loss of the privilege 
of social life. It is a life itself. It brings out its 
own qualities and powers in the man who lives it. He 
may think it better or worse than some other life ; he 
may endeavor to pass out of it into a fuller life ; but 
while he lives in it, it ought to be always making him 
more profoundly aware of his own soul, more reverent 
toward God, more able to think great thoughts of his 
fellow-men. If you must pass through what is even a 
desert to get to fertile, smiling lands beyond, still it is 
not good to count even the desert a mere necessary evil 
to be got through and forgotten as soon as possible. It 
is good as you plod through the sand to feed your eyes 
with the vastness and simplicity of the world which 
the monotony of sky and sand can most impressively 
display to you. So if God has appointed to any of us 
times of solitude and friendlessness, — perhaps times of 
unpopularity and neglect, — let us pray that we may not 



How to be Abased. 



173 



pass through them, however dreary they may be, with- 
out bringing out from them greater conceptions of Him 
and of our fellow-men and of ourselves. This is the way 
in which a man may show that he has known how to 
live alone, or even to live neglected and despised. 

And so we come to the last of our specified instances 
of abasement, — the loss of spiritual exaltation and de- 
light. It is a loss indeed. Delight, enthusiasm, hope, 
content, — these are the true conditions of a Christian 
life, just as song is the true condition of the bird, or 
color of the rose. But just as the bird is still a bird 
although it cannot sing, and the rose is still a rose al- 
though its red grows dull and faded in some dark, close 
room where it is compelled to grow, — so the Christian 
is a Christian still, even although his soul is dark with 
doubt, and he goes staggering on, fearing every moment 
that he will fall, never daring to look up and hope. To 
such conditions of depression every Christian some- 
times comes. In such a condition many Christians 
seem to live all along through their melancholy lives. 
What then ? What shall we say ? It is not good. It 
is not necessary. That we ought to know first of all. 
Let us beware of giving to such moods and conditions 
any such advantage as would come from thinking them 
to be the right and true condition of a humble Chris- 
tian life. Humility for the Christian, the truest 
humility, means hope and enthusiasm. It must be so. 
Since the whole strength of the Christian experience is 
in the Saviour and not in the soul, the real acceptance 
of the Saviour by the soul must, just in proportion as 
it is complete, endow the soul with His vision and open 



174 



How to be Abased. 



before it all His certain prospects of success. No! 
To be distrustful and gloomy in the Christian life is 
not a sign of humility ; often it is a sign of pride. Yet 
the evident distinction still remains. A man may 
be a Christian and yet fail of a Christian's rapture 
and peace. And what then ? While he walks in the 
darkness, he must know how to be abased. However 
he ought to be up and out of this condition, yet while 
he lives in it there is a right way and a wrong way for 
him to live. Then there comes in the great regulative 
force of duty, — duty, the due, the thing that ought to 
be done. Oh, how we come to value the perpetual min- 
istry of that great power ! I spoke last Sunday of how 
it kept the soul in its exaltations from flying wildly 
off into vague rhapsodies and dreams. Behold, to-day 
how this same power of duty preserves the soul in its 
depression from despair ! Then when all higher light 
seems dark, may be the very time when the light on 
daily tasks grows clear. You cannot see the distant 
heaven. You cannot hear the songs of angels. You 
cannot even say assuredly that you know the love of 
God, — but you do know that to be brave and true and 
pure is better than to be cowardly and false and foul. 
You do know that there are men and women all about 
you suffering, some of them dying, for sympathy and 
help. You do know that whether God loves you or not, 
right is right ! Oh, how these great simple assurances 
come out when the higher lights of the loftier experi- 
ences grow dark ! I will not say, I dare not say, that 
God lets the heavenly light be darkened in order that 
these earthly duties may appear. I only say that when 



How to be Abased. 



175 



the cloud stretches itself across the heavens, then, un- 
derneath the cloud and shut out from the sunshine, the 
imprisoned soul still finds for itself a rich life of duty, 
a life of self-control, a life of charity, a life of growth. 

Is there some man or woman here who says, "My 
religious life has no exaltations, no high hopes. I am 
not equal to this life of depression. I do not know how 
to be abased. I do not know how to go on and be true 
to my religion, still shut out from its divinest hopes. " 
What shall our answer be ? The world of duty is your 
world. Go; do your duty, giving to every task the sub- 
limest motive which you know and which you can bring 
to bear upon it. Get at the essence of goodness, which 
is not in its enthusiasms or delights, but in its heart of 
consecration. Sometimes the consecration may be all 
the more thorough and complete when the joy of conse- 
cration seems to be farthest away. And yet every con- 
secration made in the darkness is reaching out toward 
the light, and in the end must come out into the light, 
strong in the strength which it won in its life and 
struggle in the dark. 

So here, then, is one brief conclusion, — here is the 
result and substance of it all : Not to all men, not to 
an} T man always does God give complete abundance. 
To all men sometimes, to some men in long stretches 
of their lives, come the abasement times, — times of 
poverty, times of ignorance, times of friendlessness, 
times of distrust and doubt; but God does not mean 
that these times should be like great barren stretches 
and blanks in our lives only to be travelled over for the 



176 



How to be Abased. 



sake of what lies beyond. To him who, like Paul, 
knows how to be abased, they have their own rich 
value. They do for him their own good work. To have 
our desire set on nothing absolutely except character, 
to be glad that God should lead us into any land where 
there is character to win, — this is the only real expla- 
nation of life. He that has it may be more than rec- 
onciled to living. He may do more than triumph over 
his abasements. He may make close friendships with 
them, so that he shall part from them with sorrow 
when he is called to go to the right hand of God where 
there is no more abasement, nothing but fulness 
forevermore. 



XI. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

Ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. — 2 Coe. iv. 5. 

The Church of Christ has been a power in the world 
for many years. More and more widely it has spread, 
till civilization is familiar with its presence ; and over 
the borders of civilization it has run with its mission- 
ary influence, and in lands which once were civilized 
it has lingered with its persistent vitality, so that to- 
day it is hard to find any country which is the home 
of man wherein the Christian Church has not laid the 
corner-stones of its truth and lifted the spire of its 
hope. 

It is possible at least to ascribe to the intrinsic vital- 
ity of the Church some of those features of her history 
which oftentimes seem strange. That she should have 
excited violent hatred as well as violent love ; that she 
should have been variously conceived, and that men 
should have quarrelled over their various conceptions of 
her ; that she should have actually been different things 
at different times, — all these indisputable facts are 
what might naturally have been looked for in a living 
system made of living men. They all have come. They 
fill the Church's history with life and movement. They 
bring her ever new, though ever old and still the same, 

12 



178 



The Christian Church, 



to each new age. They make the question, What then 
is the Church ? a question always fit to ask and answer. 

I shall not try to ask or answer it to-day. But on 
this morning when we are to ask you for your offerings 
for the extension of the Church's work and life in our 
own country, — for domestic missions, — I should like, 
as it has been my custom, to draw your thoughts to one 
or two truths about the Church and its people and its 
ministry which are very simple, but which I am not 
certain that we always carry in our memories. 

We go back to the New Testament for the beginnings 
of the Church ; and, when we once are there, — quite on 
the other side of all the discussions and refinements 
which have come in through all the Christian ages, — it 
is wonderful how simple it all is. Jesus Christ comes 
and preaches the Gospel of the Kingdom, and manifests 
the life of God. He stands with His shining nature 
upon the hill of the truth He has to preach. He is 
lifted up, by and by, in the fulness of His self-sacrifice 
upon His cross. Toward His light, soul after soul is 
drawn out of the darkness. Into the power of His self- 
sacrifice one life after another is summoned out of its 
discontent. It is all personal and individual at first. 
" As many as receive Him to them gives He power to 
become the Sons of God. " It is this man and that man 
that is summoned. The light shines through this win- 
dow and finds one laborer at his work. It smiles in 
through the smoke of some boisterous revel and fills 
some generous heart with shame. It smiles upon some 
dreamer and turns his dream into a purpose. It is all 
personal and individual. "Follow me," "Follow me," 



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179 



and Matthew leaves his tax-table standing in the street ; 
and the sons of Zebedee pull hastily in over the blue 
water to give themselves to the Master, who has called 
them from the shore. 

And what came next ? Why, the most natural thing 
in all the world, — that which must always come when 
single men believe the same truth, or are driven on by 
the same impulse. When did a host of scholars ever 
sit at the same teacher's feet and not become a school ? 
When did a host of separate soldiers go each to fight 
the same enemy and not be drawn into an army ? When 
were a multitude of atoms ever filled with one mag- 
netism and not brought into magnetic communion with 
each other ? All the individual believers in, and fol- 
lowers of, Christ become one in their common loyalty 
and love. And so out of the crowd of disciples comes 
the Church. 

By and by a change approaches. The fountain out of 
which the Church life visibly has sprung, the Master 
who has called each of these disciples audibly to Him- 
self, is just about to vanish from their sight. He is 
to be still to each of them, and to each of those who 
shall come after them, the same which He has always 
been. Still, with His unseen presence, He is to give 
His separate summons to every soul. The unity of His 
believers to the end of time is still to have the secret of 
its existence in the personal relation between each of 
them and Him. To help this invisible relation to real- 
ize itself and not to be all lost in the unseen, the gra- 
cious kindness of the Master provides two symbols which 
thenceforth become the pledges at once of the personal 



180 



The Christian Church, 



believer's belonging to the Lord, and of tlie belonging of 
believers to each other. The sacraments are set like 
gems to hold the Church into its precious unity. 

Such is the Church. The union of believers, out- 
wardly manifested by the sacraments, but having its 
essence in the personal union of each believer's soul 
with Christ. I see the gates of the New Testament 
open outward. That life which had been taking shape 
within the little world which the New Testament en- 
closed, goes forth so quietly, so simply to meet the 
larger life of the world ! It is Peter coming down from 
the house-top to go to Cornelius at Cesarea, It is 
Paul crossing over from Troas into Macedonia. I see 
the history which has come since. And all bears testi- 
mony to the naturalness of the New Testament process 
by the way in which it has possessed the world. This 
Jesus must be a true Lord of men. This power which 
draws His disciples to each other must be a genuine 
power. These sacraments must be intrinsically natural 
utterances of what they try to express ; for, lo, every- 
where the Church has built itself! In every age, in 
every land she stands, her single life pulsating with 
the multitudinous life of which she is composed, the ul- 
timate pulsation coming from the living life of her 
Master, to which every particle of her being immediately 
responds ; the two jewels on her breast-plate burn- 
ing with ever-deepening and accumulating richness, and 
making together the clasp which holds about her essen- 
tial nature the robe of her outward form. 

This is the Christian Church, — the most glorious 
because the most natural, the most natural because the 



The Christian Church. 



181 



most glorious, of all the associations and institutions 
of mankind. But as yet, you see, we have not spoken 
of that which sometimes seems to stand forth first in 
people's thinking of the Church. We have not spoken 
of the ministry, and we are right. The Church exists 
before the ministry. Jesus has gathered His disciples. 
They are united each to Him, and through Him they are 
all united to each other ; and then, one day, out of the 
group of those disciples He chooses twelve whom also 
He calls apostles. They are disciples first, and their 
discipleship lies behind their apostleship until the end. 
Out from the body of the Church rise certain men, 
called by the Lord to whom the Church belongs, in 
whom all that the Church means shall be peculiarly 
represented, who shall tell its story to the world, who 
shall both cultivate and manifest its life. They are to 
build the Church, and to declare the Church. They 
are not to rule the Church, certainly not to be the 
Church. That is what has taken place ever since. Out 
of the great body of Christians have stood forth the 
Christian leaders. Now with one sort of ordination, 
now with another ; now with the summons of the people, 
now with the irresistible impulse of their own souls ; 
now with the direct call of God most clear and plain, 
but always, if they were truly ministers of Christ, 
with all three consenting and confederate to give them 
their position, — in every age, in every land there have 
stood forth the Church's ministers (true successors of 
the first apostles), some more and some less visibly 
united to those earliest ministers by their forms of 
faith and action ; but all successors of the apostles 



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in the nature and the spirit of the work they had 
to do. 

And that ministry, what was it, what is it, to the 
Church ? Is it the Church's master ? Is it the sole 
and solemn channel through which divine truth and the 
divine will comes to the waiting hearts which could 
know neither but for it ? Is it the stream through which 
alone grace flows out of the Fountain of Grace, which 
is the heart of God ? That were a clear idea, a most 
distinct and unmistakable theory. That would set the 
people following wherever the ministry chose to lead. 
That would reduce all duty to one single duty, obedi- 
ence, perfect obedience to the spiritual lord. But also 
that would either deny or render insignificant the very 
fact from which, as we saw, the Church took its exist- 
ence. That fact is the personal communion between 
each believer and the Christ. That fact must not be 
tampered with. No ministry of any most thoroughly 
ordained apostle must relieve the individual soul of its 
responsibility or rob the individual soul of its privilege 
of immediate search after the truth, immediate submis- 
sion to the commandment of its Lord. What then ? 
There is only one other place for the ministry to hold. 
If it is not the master it must be the servant of the 
Church. If it is not set to rule, it must rejoice to obey ; 
to know the Church to be greater than it and not its 
creature, to accept it as its highest duty to help the 
Church to realize itself, and to grow into the full power 
of the Divine Life of which it, through the relation be- 
tween Christ and the souls of its individual members, is 
perpetually the recipient. 



The Christian Church. 



183 



Ruler or servant, which shall it be ? Strange how 
from the first the very name by which the successors of 
the apostles have been called has seemed to answer the 
question for itself. They have been ministers; and 
" ministers " means " servants. " Strange how the great- 
est of them all at the beginning took pains to claim the 
place in which he and his brethren should stand. " Not 
for that we have dominion over your faith, " cried Paul, 
" but we are partakers of your joy. " And then again in 
those great words which I have made my text, — " We 
preach ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. " Strange 
that, with words like these written in the very forefront 
of its shining history, the Church should have so loved 
the other notion of the rulership of the clergy, the 
dominion of the priest ; and hierarchies, splendid with 
pomp, or subtle with intrigue, but always hard with 
tyranny, should have so filled the story of the Chris- 
tian ages. 

And yet not strange ! Nothing is strange whose illus- 
trations occur alike in every region of human life. And 
where is the department of living in which servantship 
has not always tried to turn itself into rulership, and 
had with long delay and difficulty to be brought back to 
the higher idea of servantship again. Certainly it is 
so in government. What is the world learning after 
all these years except that the governor is the servant 
of his people ? After centuries of tyranny and subject- 
ship, — centuries in which the people seemed to exist 
only by the ruler's permission, and to have no power of 
originating thought and action, — everything is changed. 
In all of civilized Christendom there is no king who 



184 



The Christian Church. 



dares to claim that lie is anything but the people's 
servant, that his power came from them, and that their 
will must lie behind his everywhere. 

That idea of servantship has never been so absolutely 
lost in religion as it has in politics ; but if you read the 
story of five centuries ago, or if you see the visions which 
floating before the eyes of priests have been incorpo- 
rated into ecclesiastical institutions, you will become 
aware of how the other idea, — the idea of lordship, — 
has always been pressing for assertion. Lord-Bishops 
and Lord-Presbyters, Church Barons and Church 
Princes, Popes, Prelates, Potentates, — they all bear 
witness to the presence of a theory that the Church 
exists first in the clergy, and that the laity become part 
of the Church only by the extension of the clergy's life 
to them. Against that theory stands up the other : that 
the laity are the Church, and that the clergy exist sep- 
arate from them only to carry out the purposes of their 
life, to do in special and peculiar ways what it is the 
duty and privilege of the whole Church to do, — in one 
great word to be the Church's servants, not its lords. 

There is indeed one word in our own church's use 
which seems at first to give a color to the other theory. 
The minister of any parish is called its "rector" or 
its "ruler." And no doubt much of the direction of 
the parish's affairs is given to his hands. What is his 
power ? I take it to be very much like that which the 
company of any ship intrusts to one among their num- 
ber whom they make their steersman. They set him at 
the helm ; they put the rudder in his hands ; they bid 
him watch the compass and the stars, — but it is all a 



The Christian Church. 



185 



delegation of their power. He has no right to sail the 
ship to any other than the port they wish to reach. 
They really steer the ship in him. He is their servant 
still, obeying the commandment which they gave him 
when they said, " Guide us and help us find our way. " 

But then the question comes whether with such an 
idea of the ministry as this, it is possible to think of it 
and speak of it as a divine institution, — as something 
instituted and ordained by God Himself. Why not ? 
It all depends on where we let ourselves get into the 
habit of looking for the work of God and discovering 
the operations of His hands. If we can see God only 
in movements quite outside of the natural proceedings 
of humanity, then we shall hardly think of any minis- 
try as being divinely ordered, unless it come down to 
us in a chariot out of the sky, or else a hand be 
reached forth from heaven to rest upon the head of the 
selected priest. But if we thoroughly believe that 
God's activity is never more potent than when His 
children, full of the love and fear of Him, give Him 
the opportunity to work through them, then surely 
there can be no ordination more complete or solemn 
than that which draws forth from the host of worship- 
ping and working Christians here one and there another 
to be in special ways that which they all are in the es- 
sence of their Christianity ; to be, as Saint Paul says, 
"helpers of their joy." Do you or I believe that the 
President of the United States is less divinely called to 
his high place than Henry the Eighth or Charles the 
First was set upon the throne of England. And yet the 
president is the people's servant, and the kings were 



186 



The Christian Church. 



tyrants. When from the depths of any nation's life 
there stirs a consciousness of need which finally by a 
deliberate choice calls forth one man and says to him, 
" Be our guide, " and he obeys, I know not where to find 
a more true utterance of God's will than that. 

The very methods of the early Christian life sound 
crude to-day. We read the story of how they chose 
Matthias by lot to fill the place of Judas. We hear 
their prayer to God that He will guide the drawing of 
the numbered disk. We watch them as they stand 
around with serious exalted faces waiting the result. 
It is all true, inspiring, and impressive ; but what is it 
compared with the movement of God's spirit through a 
church, bidding it summon this or that earnest soul to 
help it and to show it of His love. A group of Chris- 
tian hearts is a nobler and more sensitive medium for 
God to speak through than a handful of pebbles in an 
urn. God may speak through either ; surely the V oice 
through the sacred, the divine medium of Man will be 
the more sacred, the more divine. 

There are three possible calls to every minister, — 
the call of God, the call of his own nature, and the call 
of needy men. May not one almost say that no man 
has a right to think himself a minister who does not 
hear all three vocations blending into one and marking 
out his path to walk in past all doubt. And these 
three come to perfect union in the soul of him who 
hears the Father call one of His children to serve the 
rest in those great necessities which belong to them 
all. 

And if we ask not simply about the sacredness of the 



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187 



ordination, but about the inspiration that goes with it, 
the answer is no less clear. Which will inspire a man 
most, which will carry him most buoyantly through a 
long life of labor, making the last years more eager and 
exhilarating than the first, the joy of ruling men or the 
joy of serving men ? He little knows what human na- 
ture is who hesitates about his answer. You may in- 
deed feel the identity between the two. You may see 
how each, realized at its fullest, becomes the other; 
how he who rules men most wisely, serves them most 
humbly ; and he who serves men most efficiently, rules 
them most powerfully ; but taking them in their ordi- 
nary distinction from each other, it is a nobler relation 
to a man to serve him than it is to rule him. Ruler- 
ship stifles and hardens the nature which it deals with. 
Servantship opens and softens it. Rulership is unsym- 
pathetic. Servantship is full of sympathy. Rulership 
is monotonous and works by law. Servantship is in- 
genious and various and free. Rulership is self-con- 
scious. Servantship is self-forgetful. The ruler grows 
tired on his throne. The servant sees his working- 
room always alive with desire and need. 

One sees the young men pressing in at the gates of 
life, eagerly asking what there is to do in this great, 
busy world, and he longs to hold out to them the privi- 
lege of the Christian ministry. I see the young men of 
this congregation ; I have seen them for almost twenty 
years. I have watched some of them as they have 
taken their places as ministers, and are doing the Gos- 
pel work. I have seen the great host of them going 
other ways. I see the great host of them going other 



188 



The Christian Church. 



ways to-day. They turn to honest, useful, interesting 
work on every side. I rejoice in all that they are do- 
ing and will do, but all the time I ask myself, " Why 
is it that they, do not more largely seek the ministry of 
Christ ? " I would that I could put the privilege of that 
ministry before them as it seems to us who have long 
lived in it. I wish that some one here this morning 
might so see it that it might win his life. I believe so 
fully that the Christian ministry in the next fifty years 
is to have a nobler opportunity of usefulness and power 
than it has ever had in the past, that I would gladly 
call, if I could, with the voice of a trumpet to the 
brave, earnest, cultivated young men who are to live in 
the next fifty years to enter into it, and share the privi- 
lege of that work together. 

And the word with which I would summon them 
should be that great word " service. " " Whosoever will 
be chief among you, let him be your servant," Jesus 
said. It was an announcement, not of mortification, 
but of satisfaction. It was not saying, " You must dis- 
appoint your desire," but "You must fulfil it." The 
fulfilment of life is service. And then He stretched out 
His arms, and with that self-assertion which no other 
son of man has ever dared to make, He bade them see 
the illustration of what He had just told them in Him- 
self. " Even as the Son of Man came not to be minis- 
tered unto but to minister," He said. 

The man who ministers, the man who is a minister, 
^ that is, a servant, — enters into the company of 
Jesus. He lives with Him who gave His life for men, 
and in so doing, lived supremely. He undertakes the 



The Christian Church. 



189 



sympathetic study of humanity in every part. He 
clothes his life with honor for human nature. He be- 
lieves in man as clogged, hindered, and broken, but as 
capable of purification and rectification by the power of 
God which he may help to bring into exercise upon it ; 
and so he undertakes his service. Is there any theory of 
rulership which can compare with that for the exhila- 
ration and elevation of a devoted man ? 

But the ministry does not exist for the good of the 
ministers, but for the good of the people ; and so it is 
necessary — before we are sure that any conception of 
the ministry is thoroughly good and true — that we 
should see if that theory will help the people to their 
best life. What then will be the effect upon the people 
of being taught that their ministers are indeed their 
ministers, their servants ? There is one effect which it 
might produce which would indeed be a blessing. It 
might make the people feel and accept their true re- 
sponsibility. If they are indeed the Church, charged 
with its interests, with its progress dependent upon 
them, they must be full of thought and care and study. 
They must know how their charge is faring. Their 
eyes must be here at home and at the ends of the earth 
at the same time. They are the Church, and its dis- 
grace or honor, its success or failure, is theirs. 

There have been great times, some far back in the 
early history, some in the modern days, in which the 
whole body of the Church has seemed in large degree 
ready to claim its privilege. The problems of religion 
have seemed to be all men's problems. The worship of 
the House of God has seemed to be all men's care. 



190 



The Christian Church. 



The extension of the truth, the spread of missions, 
has enlisted all men's anxiety and ingenuity. At 
those times the ministers have seemed really to be what 
they ought to be, not strange, foreign beings dropped 
down from the skies, or blown into a region with which 
they had no affinity out of some wholly alien world. 
They have been part and parcel of the life from which 
they sprang, and which always lay behind them and fed 
them with its strength. They were the leaders of the 
people only as the first curling wave which runs up 
farthest on the beach is the leader of the great world of 
waves which stretches out behind it, all crowding for- 
ward, all uttering its shoreward impulse in the servant- 
wave which bears its banner, and tells of its desire. 

The Church — our church like all the rest — falls too 
far short of this idea. It is too much a clergyman's 
church. The people sit too much and say, "Tell us 
what we shall think," instead of turning their own 
thoughts to the most sacred things, and by and by being 
able to say, "We think this; help us, 0 servants and 
friends of ours, to see if it be true. " The people sit too 
much and say, " Tell us what to do, " instead of coming 
with their hands full of plans, saying, " This needs to 
be done. Do it, 0 servants and friends of ours, and we 
will supply you with all the means and help you need. 
It is our work. " 

Do you not feel, even as I speak, what a breadth and 
freshness and freedom and variety and vitality would 
come into the Church's thought and working if the 
Church itself — which is the people, not the clergy — 
really did think and work, and with a true sense of 



The Christian Church. 



191 



responsibility and a true initiative impulse accepted 
the privilege of their commission ? 

Sometimes we hear our American system of Church 
management abused and even ridiculed. And no doubt 
it is liable to manifest theoretical objections. It is 
capable of being made to seem very absurd that a con- 
gregation should ask a man to come and be their 
teacher, but insist that they will only ask him with 
the understanding that he believes what they believe, 
and that if he comes to believe otherwise than they 
do, he will go away and teach them no longer. Such 
theoretical objections are easy to draw up in telling 
shape, but they amount to very little. They are of no 
consequence whatever compared with that, the real 
fact of value about our system, — which is, that the 
people are, at least declaredly, the living and effective 
body of the Church. The power and the responsibility 
reside in them. They have the real apostolical succes- 
sion. Only this certainly is true, — that, with a sys- 
tem at whose heart is such a truth, we are bound to 
carry that truth out into activity with vastly more 
completeness than we do now. It will not do for the 
people to hold the power and try to give the re- 
sponsibility away. Power and responsibility must go 
together. If the Church, as it ought, counts the minis- 
ters its servants, it must assume the deeper and higher 
and more exigent prerogatives of mastery, and think 
and study and believe and act with the energy and 
earnestness of a true Church of God. 

There is good reason to believe that the people in all 
the churches — and in our church as well as all the 



192 



The Christian Church. 



others — show signs to-day that they will recognize and 
claim their place. There is more general thought 
about religious truth. There is more spontaneous ac- 
tivity in Christian work. Men come into the Church's 
communion less and less from mere drift and habit 
more and more with serious question about what it 
means. If the clergyman is less reverenced as an auto- 
crat and less consulted as an oracle, he is more used as 
a willing servant, and more valued as a faithful friend. 

For you will freely understand how, in all that I have 
said this morning, the word " servant " must be com- 
pletely stripped of a great deal of base association be- 
fore it can be put to the high use which I have claimed 
for it. It must be not contradictory to, but identical 
with, the other word which I have just linked to it, 
the word " friend. " u Servus Servorum Dei, " — the ser- 
vant of the servants of God, — so the most gorgeous of 
ecclesiastical princes has called himself, reverting ever 
to the first and truest thought of what he is. And yet 
"Amicus Amicorum Dei," — friend of the friends of 
God, — surely that too must be his name. All hard- 
ness, all reluctance, all tyranny on the one side, and all 
obsequiency on the other side, must pass away. And 
then in an atmosphere of mutual service — which is also 
an atmosphere of mutual love — the lives of minister 
and people must give themselves each to the other, and 
both to the work of Christ and of His Church. 

The Church of the Millennial days shall be nothing 
less, nothing else than a regenerated and complete hu- 
manity. There all shall be ministers, for all shall be 
servants. All shall be people, for all shall be served. 



The Christian Church. 



193 



In these imperfect days let us watch and wait for those 
days of perfectness. Let us do all we can to help 
their coming. Let us count no condition final till 
they come. Let us live in, and live for, and never de- 
spair of, the ever-advancing, ever-enlarging Church of 
Christ. 



xn. 



THE OPENING OF THE EYES. 

Jesrs said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God ? He an. 
swered and said, Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him ? And 
Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh 
with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe, and he worshipped Him. — 
John ix. 35-38. 

There is always a deep fascination for us in seeing 
exactly how another person's mind works. Some peo- 
ple are very attractive simply from a transparency 
which lets us look in perfectly upon their mental move- 
ments and see just how all their processes work out 
their conclusions, even if there is nothing remarkable 
in the processes themselves. And even with the other 
kind of attraction which belongs to very difficult and 
reserved people, whose mental action it is hard to 
follow, the secret of it is still the same ; for what draws 
us to them is merely the desire to do what seems so 
hard, to catch some sound of the machinery which they 
conceal so well, and guess how it is working. We are 
unable to accept any result without supposing a process 
behind it. 

In all the outward works of men, in all that their 
bodies do, we see the process perfectly, and trace it 
perfectly to the result, and all is very satisfactory. 
We see the mason lay every brick, and so the house 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



195 



when it is done is perfectly accountable. At the other 
extreme all the highest workings, all God's workings, 
we cannot trace. Results stand out alone. There we 
have miracles. Between the two, half-hidden, half-dis- 
coverable, always tempting us to discover more, there 
are men's mental movements. Some part they will not 
tell us, other parts they cannot. We watch the pro- 
cesses by which our neighbors come to their conclu- 
sions ; and they elude us like a stream that goes sliding 
along through thickets, only occasionally glistening out 
into a patch of sun-lit water, just frequent enough to let 
us keep the general bearing of its course. How Moses 
came to undertake the leadership of Israel, how David 
was led to offer himself against the giant, how Caesar 
came to cross the Rubicon, what made my friend give up 
his promising career and go into the army for his coun- 
try, — I can see just enough of these to give me interest 
in them, an interest, that is, a real place inside such 
questions, just enough to tempt me always with the 
desire to know more. The way in which the workings 
of God's mind are always represented to us in the Bible 
under the most familiar human representations, — re- 
pentance, jealousy, anger, patience, — those affections 
which must be so different from anything we can con- 
ceive of in their mightiness and their purity being 
identified with and expressed by the feeble human 
echoes of them of which we do know something, — this 
is the Bible's effort to give men the same interest in 
the thoughts of God which they have in the thoughts of 
one another. It is a part of the same effort of which 
the Incarnation was the sum and crown. 



196 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



The book or story or lecture which by sympathetic 
insight lets us have this interesting view of how some 
mind is working, is always popular. If any one could 
perfectly describe how the poorest man in town came to 
do the simplest of his duties, if he could show how every 
wheel of motive was toothed and fitted into its task, 
and make it perfectly clear how each step led to every 
next one, he would fascinate any audience that listened 
to him. The books that do it most completely are not 
the subtle books of casuistry which set out to do it, 
but the simplest and most earnest books, — those which 
deal with men in their most earnest, which are always 
their simplest, moments. This description applies 
above all books to the Bible, and the Bible people do 
open their mental movements to us with a clearness 
which no other series of characters can rival. We see 
their thoughts grow ; and we see more than we usually 
can of how the thought involves and necessitates the 
action. This is a large part of the charm of the Bible 
for those who have no deepest personal religious 
interest in it. 

There is an illustration of this in the story from 
which I take this evening's text. Jesus had given a 
blind man his sight. The Pharisee, associating the 
man with his Restorer, had made a captious quarrel 
with him, and finally excommunicated him. Jesus 
meets him, and it ends by his becoming the worship- 
ping disciple of the Master. Here was a great change, 
and yet the whole story of it is told in one chapter. 
Everybody who reads the chapter feels that he knows 
the whole, understands just how the man became a 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



197 



Christian. It would not be possible to find a story 
through which you could more clearly trace the flow of 
a simple, candid mind from motive to conviction, from 
fountain to ocean, than we can this man's. 

If we can understand it so clearly, it must throw 
some light upon other religious experiences, — upon the 
ways in which some other men come to Christ, — which 
are not so clear ; and this is why I want to make it the 
basis of a few words to-night. What I have to say 
will belong in part to each of the three speeches in the 
short dialogue which I read for the text : " Dost thou 
believe on the Son of God?" "Who is He, that I 
might believe on Him ? " " Thou hast both seen Him, 
and it is He that talketh with thee." Then he wor- 
shipped Him. 

Jesus said to him, Dost thou believe on the Son of 
God ? Consider the man's position. He had been 
blind all his life; he was blind that morning; now, 
at night, he saw. The wonderful beauty of the world 
had burst upon him. The greatest luxury of sense that 
man enjoys was his, and he was revelling in its new- 
found enjoyment. And he was intensely grateful to 
the friend who had given it to him. He loved Him 
and thanked Him with his whole heart. And the 
blessing had cost him something, and was all the dearer 
for that. It had cost him his hereditary position in 
the national synagogue. One must almost be a Jew to 
know what a sacrifice it was to give that up; but he 
had been very brave and generous about it. He had 
stood" by his benefactor. When they wanted to make 
him insult Jesus he had honored Him ; and now when 



198 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



he saw Him coming, his whole heart leaped up with joy. 
All that he had suffered seemed as nothing. Here was 
his wonderful friend, and he could thank Him once 
again. He had found Him. He saw Him with the 
new, strange, beautiful sight which He Himself had 
given. And just then Jesus steps in and questions 
him ; not, " Are you glad and grateful ? " but " Dost 
thou believe on the Son of God ? " It is a new thought, 
a new view altogether. We can almost see the sur- 
prise and bewilderment creep over his glad face. He 
had been hurrying to thank a friend, and here he was 
stopped and thrown back to think and answer whether 
he " believed on the Son of God. " 

"The Son of God." The name was not wholly 
strange to him. It had lurked throughout his well- 
learned national history. Angels in the Old Testa- 
ment had been called God's sons. Sometimes great, 
pure, and holy men had recognized their sonship to di- 
vinity, or had it recognized by others. That there was 
a God, and that they were His children, bearing some 
part of His nature, and loved with His fatherly tender- 
ness, — all this he knew something about ; but " The 
Son of God, " — one in whom the hints and best prom- 
ises of all these others were fulfilled, one who really 
brought the Deity with Him and stood as Mediator 
between the Father and the sons everywhere, between 
the beneficent divine and the needy human, — this 
bewildered him. It may have fascinated him, and 
filled him with that strange sort of longing which we 
all have after our highest dreams of whose reality we 
have no proof except the intensity with which we wish 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



199 



that they were true. It may have fascinated him, but 
it bewildered him first. It was not what he had ex- 
pected. The ground where he had thought to lay the 
foundation of his little monument of gratitude had 
opened to infinite depths, and he must build so much 
deeper than he had thought. He had it on his lips to 
thank his friend, and lo ! suddenly he was dealing with 
God and with the infinite relations between God and 
man. 

It is a bewilderment which is always ready to fall, 
which often does fall, upon the superficialness of our 
ordinary life. There are always deep truths ready to 
open beneath us, and great unifying truths which are 
always waiting to close around and bind into a sur- 
prising unity the fragmentary lives we live. For we 
certainly do live very much in fragments. Our special 
blessings stand isolated, and are not grasped and gath- 
ered into one great pervading consciousness of a blessed 
life, — of a life brooded over and cared for and trained 
by God the Blesser. Health is a joy of the senses, 
a delight of full red blood and strong springy mus- 
cles, and a skin that tingles with joy in the cold or 
basks with joy in the sunshine. It has no strong, suffi- 
cient purpose. We are well and strong for nothing. 
Talent, skill, culture, do their little separate works. 
They have hardly more, in some ways they have less, 
associations in the unity of a plan of life than the in- 
stincts of the brutes. One paints his picture, another 
builds his house, another wins his fortune, and each 
achievement stands by itself and leaves the bystander 
asking, or at least sets the worker himself to asking, as 



200 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



he looks back on his life, " Well, what of it ? " Power, 
as men get it and use it, is like the play of a crowd of 
children turned into a great factory and amusing them- 
selves by whirling one this wheel, and one the other, 
with no single purpose controlling and no single result 
issuing from the whole. One rules his senate and an- 
other his society and another his family and another his 
club and, with all the power everywhere lavished, the 
whole goes largely unruled. Is not this the trouble ? 
We live in such small detail. The world unfolds its 
riches more and more. We are turned loose among 
them. Blessing — opportunity, which is the great 
blessing — opens around us on every side; but in the 
midst of it all we seem to live such a baby-life. We 
are so like children in their nurseries, who know every 
toy and bit of furniture perfectly, but know no whole, 
— have no conception of the purpose of the nursery 
and its meaning. There are high impulses enough; 
there are patriotism and courage; men will die for 
friends and country, — but it all lacks spiritual unity. 
Where is the centre of it all ? 

Take any life. A boy has his dozen years of full 
boy's pleasure, and every day's enjoyment is a sort of 
rude, healthy, barbaric hymn of how good it is to live. 
Then comes the young man's education, and that is 
good too, subtler, finer, more conscious, sweeter. Then 
comes manhood with its happy cares and incitements. 
That is good too. Business, public spirit, family life, 
■ — the great sum-total of all is a sense of gladness; but 
how blind it is, how it eddies in circles which come 
back on themselves, how it seems to lack drift and ten- 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



201 



dency and direction. How hard it is to think of it all 
as having been launched from the hand of any deliber- 
ate design, or as having an appointed end in any defi- 
nite result. How easy it is to sit down by the side of 
the very richest and fullest and most successful life we 
ever knew, and in certain moods find ourselves saying of 
it, " Well, what of it after all ? " That is not the great 
first feeling to be sure. The first feeling is a pure de- 
light and thankfulness for our existence and its blessed- 
ness, even f ragmentarily as we conceive of them ; but, 
because we do conceive of them f ragmentarily, that 
other feeling is always lurking underneath and any lit- 
tle convulsion may throw it any moment to the top. 

What can save us ? Suppose this. Suppose that. 
Meaning to thank God for the fulness of your life, — for 
health, wealth, power, for love, for friendship, for all 
this beautiful world with all that it is full of, — you are 
suddenly met with this question, " Dost thou believe on 
the Son of God ? " At first it seems so unmeaning. 
What does it mean ? It means this : Are you glad and 
grateful for these things as little separate sensations 
of pleasure ? That amounts to nothing. Or are you 
thankful for them as manifestations of the divine life 
to yours, as tokens of that fatherhood of God which 
found its great utterance, including all others, in the 
Incarnation of His Son ? That is everything. No 
wonder that such a question brings surprise. It is so 
much more than you expected. It is like the poor Nea- 
politan peasant who struck his spade into the soil to dig 
a well, and the spade went through into free space and 
he had discovered all the hidden wealth of Hercula- 



202 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



neum. No wonder there is surprise at first ; but after- 
ward you see that in the belief in a manifested Son of 
God, if you could gain it, you would have just the prin- 
ciple of spiritual unity in which your life is wanting, 
and the lack of which makes so much of its very best so 
valueless. If you could believe in one great utterance 
of God, one incarnate word, the manifested pity of 
God, and the illustrated possibility of man at once, — 
then, with such a central point, there could be no 
more fragmentariness anywhere. All must fall into 
its relation to it, to Him, and so the unity of life show 
forth. Blessings of every sort are reflections of that 
great blessing. Powers of every sort are glimpses of 
that possible manhood which was manifest in Him. 
Love of every kind is God's love. The centre once set, 
the circle builds itself. The manifestation of the Son 
of God, of Christ, gives all other blessings a place and 
meaning, just as the sun in heaven accounts for and res- 
cues from fragmentariness every little light of the innu- 
merable host which, in every hue and brilliancy, sparkle 
and flash and glow from every point of our sun-lit 
world. 

This is the importance of the question. "True," you 
say, " but the eye may enjoy the sparkle of a diamond 
or the color of a rose even if it does not know that both 
are borrowed from the sun and belong to it ; and so one 
may delight in many a joy of life without any conscious 
reference of it to that spiritual purpose of it all which 
Christ illustrated. " I know he may ; but on the whole 
that wearying sense of a lack of unity and purpose must 
come in ; and the pleasure and the culture which come 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



203 



by spiritual treatments unconsciously experienced are 
always deepened and richened when one consciously and 
cordially submits to a training that is clearly understood. 

Superficialness and fragmentariness go together. The 
more profoundly you get into the heart of things the 
more simple they become, and the more their unity 
comes out. This question, then, is a demand for more 
profoundness, and appeals from the surface to the heart 
of things. 

If one could get the ear of modern enterprise and 
progress, what question would he want to ask of this 
wonderful giant that is conquering the earth ? What 
but this ? " Dost thou believe in the Son of God ? " 
Ask it of the business that fills our streets, of the science 
that discovers, of the philosophy that thinks, of the labor 
that creates, of the invention that devises. Ask it of 
education which is the atmosphere, and politics which 
is the electricity, and home-life which is the sunshine 
of the days men live. Ask it of art, ask it of philan- 
thropy; ask it at the doors of schools and counting- 
rooms and state-houses and city halls and museums 
and homes. " Dost thou believe in the Son of God ? " 
Have you faith in a spiritual purpose behind, under, 
through and through all that you are doing, — the soul 
by which it lives ? Do you believe in and are you in- 
spired by a pure, clear faith in God's love and in man's 
destiny as all gathered and summed up in the redemp- 
tion of the God-Man, Jesus Christ? "Dost thou be- 
lieve iu the Son of God ? " A strange question for such 
places; but if they could answer it, what a new life 
would be in them all ! 



204 The Opening of the Eyes. 

. , — — n 

And then if we could ask the question of separate 
men in their separate lives. Your blessings are heaped 
up ; your powers tempt and fascinate you ; your associ- 
ations are so many fountains, each pouring in its spe 
cial joy upon your soul, — tell me, do you believe in the 
Son of God ? Do not turn away and say the question is 
impertinent, that it means nothing to you. It means 
this, Is there any controlling present sense of a mani- 
fested and ever-manifesting God that gives a unity to 
your family, your occupation, your pleasure, in the 
certainty of a divine Fatherhood and Brotherhood. Do 
you have any understanding of what this means : " He 
that spared not His own Son but freely gave Him up 
for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give 
us all things, " — any understanding such that when 
" all things " come they are immediately recognized as 
given in Him, so that they are no longer unaccountable 
fragments, — these many blessings, — but the pledges 
of the great spiritual heritage of holiness, of perfect 
life, which belongs to you as a child, an heir of God, a 
joint heir with Christ the Son of God ? Do you believe 
in the Son of God like this ? If you do, not the bread 
on your table, not the joy of the sunshine, not your bal- 
ance in the bank, no blessing is too common or vulgar 
to fall into its due place in the structural unity of the 
new life which is faith in Christ. Every gift excites 
gratitude to Him as the Giver, and grows sacred in its 
necessary dedication to Him as the Lord. 

Our whole thanksgiving is pitched in too low a key ; 
we come with gratitude for opened eyes, and the Sav- 
iour meets us with, "Dost thou believe in the Son of 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



205 



God ? " If so, thank God for that faith, for that in- 
cludes every blessing. 

So much of Christ's question. Now what was the 
man's answer ? " Dost thou believe on the Son of 
God ? " " Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on 
Him ? " "I do not know, " he seems to say, " I did not 
mean anything like that ; I did not seem to believe, but 
yet I have not evidently exhausted or fathomed my own 
thought. There is something below that I have not 
realized. Perhaps I do believe. At any rate I should 
like to. The vague notion attracts me. I will believe 
if I can. " " Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on 
Him ? " The simplicity and frankness, the guilelessness 
and openness of the man makes us like him more 
than ever. There is evidently for him a chance, nay, 
a certainty, that he will be greater, fuller, better than 
he is. 

Some natures are inclusive; some are exclusive. 
Some men seem to be always asking, " How much can 
I take in," and some are always asking, "How much 
can I shut out ? " You see it in men's affections. Some 
men from boyhood up are eager for objects to love. They 
crave new currents of affection as the ocean craves the 
rivers. They will love anything or anybody that gives 
them a chance. They will fasten like vines about any 
most shapeless thing which will simply stand still and let 
them. They do not need response. Other men are chary 
of their love. Their ingenuity seems to run the other 
way. They will find something in the most perfect char- 
acter that can release them from the unwelcome duty of 
admiration and regard. They seem to be always saying, 



206 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



" Tell nie something about him that can lessen my love, 
that can show me that I need not love him. " And so 
it is in matters of action too. Some minds are quick 
to find the practicability and usefulness of things, and 
devise how they can do them ; other minds are quick to 
see the impossibilities and the hindrances of things, 
and discover why they need not do them. Some men 
seek tasks, and some men shirk them. 

And so it is peculiarly of faith. One man wants to 
believe; he welcomes evidence. He asks, "Who is 
He, that I may believe on Him ? " Another man seems 
to dread to believe ; he has ingenuity in discovering the 
flaws of proof. If he asks for more information, it is 
because he is sure that some objection or discrepancy 
will appear which will release him from the unwelcome 
duty of believing. He says, " Show me more of Him, 
of what He is, and I will surely find some reason why I 
should not believe Him. " We see the two tendencies, 
all of us, in people that we know. Carried to their ex- 
tremes, they develop on one side the superstitious and 
on the other side the sceptical spirit. 

Different ages swing to one side or the other. There 
is one view of our own time which sees in it the embodi- 
ment of the sceptical tendency; certainly its critical 
spirit is very manifest. It asks with a loud voice how 
it may escape believing. I believe the other spirit, 
though quiet in its operations, is very active all the 
while down below. I believe that what passes for the 
spirit of doubt is very often the spirit of belief misun- 
derstood, sometimes misunderstanding itself; but cer- 
tainly the tendency to avoid believing unless one is 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



207 



absolutely forced to it is very strong and very common. 
Any one can see it. 

But speculations on the character of our own time as 
a whole are good for very little. How is it with us 
ourselves ? Do we not share in this spirit of unwilling- 
ness to believe ? It is an educated temper which often 
has become so set in us that we do not recognize it 
for what it is ; we do not know that there is any other 
temper. But there is another. There is a large healthy 
hunger after belief which is as different from the mor- 
bid appetite of superstition, as health always is different 
from disease. There are men who want to believe, — 
who would rather believe than not, — when some great 
spiritual theory of the universe is offered them to ac- 
count for its bewilderments and to help its troubles. 
The secret of their life seems to be this, that they are 
men deeply impressed with the infiniteness of life. 
Does that seem vague and transcendental ? They are 
men who are always conscious of the spiritual and un- 
seen underneath the visible and material, — men who 
are always sure that there is a great region of unknown 
truth which they ought to know, and who are restless 
after it. To such men all that they see presupposes 
things which they do not see. 

There comes great happiness to them. That happi- 
ness is perfectly hollow unless there is a meaning be- 
hind it, unless it tells of intentions somewhere, unless 
it means love. They know that "Eat, drink, and be 
merry, " is not the end of it all. To love some one who 
is loving them, that is what they want to do. "Oh, 
that I could find Him ! Oh, that I could find Him ! " is 



208 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



their cry. Great sorrow comes. But to them sorrow 
cannot rest in broken limbs or lost fortunes. Those 
again are only symbols. The essential thing lies deeper. 
The meaning once more must be personal. Some hand 
— of friend or enemy — hath done this. Whose hand ? 
And immediately the eager eye is searching among 
spiritual and eternal things. What has God had to do 
with it all ? The sorrow rolls over the soul with 
stronger forces than its own weight could carry. They 
are sure they do not know the whole about it. They 
crave something more to believe. 

Or sin comes, great sin, — for to such a mind no sin 
seems small. What is sin ? The broken law, the dis- 
ordered order, seem but outside things. Somewhere 
there must be a centre and a source of law, a soul of 
order. Somewhere there must be one to whom the sin- 
ful heart can cry, "Against Thee have I sinned," in the 
deep satisfaction of confession ; to whom it can appeal, 
" Be merciful to me a sinner, " in mighty supplication 
for forgiveness. Until it finds Him, it carries its load ; 
and no pardon from fellow-man, no repair of conse- 
quences can take it off. 

So everywhere the nature that is conscious of the in- 
finiteness of life longs to believe in a manifested God. 
Its whole disposition is toward faith ; and then if any 
glimpse is offered of a Son of God, a manifestation of 
the Invisible Deity who sends happiness and sorrow and 
who can forgive sin, there is no tendency to disbelieve, 
there is the hunger of the heart leaping with fearful 
hope, there is the stretching out of the arms as when 
they told Bartimeus, " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by ; " 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



209 



and the soul cries out, " Who is He that I may believe 
on Him." 

More than we think, far more, depends upon this first 
attitude of the whole nature, — upon whether we want 
to believe or want to disbelieve. To one who wants to 
disbelieve, objections, difficulties, spring from every 
page of the Bible, from every word of Christ. To one 
who finds the forces of this life sufficient, an incarna- 
tion, a supernatural salvation is incredible. To one 
who, looking deeper, knows there must be some infinite 
force which it has not found yet, — ■ some loving, living 
force of Emanuel, of God with man, — the Son of God 
is waiting on the threshold and will immediately come. 
Christ supposes an element of incompleteness every- 
where, making a hungry world, — preparing the whole 
man not to reject as useless and incredible, but to accept 
as just what it needs and expects, a mysterious, a su- 
pernatural, divine Redemption, preparing the mental 
nature for faith, and the moral nature for repentance, 
and the spiritual nature for guidance. To this readi- 
ness alone can Christ come. You remember that there 
were cities where Jesus could do no mighty works be- 
cause of their unbelief. You remember Jerusalem: 
u Oh how often would I have gathered thy children 
together and ye would not." 

This seems to me part of what Christ means when He 
tells us that, " Except we become as little children we 
cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." The little 
children are ready for every revelation that may come 
to them. This strange new world is very big, is infinite 
to them ; and no force seems too mighty, too infinite to 

H 



210 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



fill it. You tell them of a Son of God, and it seems 
most natural to them, — the whole story of Bethlehem 
and Calvary ; they cry, " Who is He that we may believe 
in Him ? " This is what Wordsworth sings in his great 
ode,— 

"Those obstinate questionings 

Of sense and outward things, 

Fallings from us, vanishings, 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 

those first affections, 

Those shadowy recollections, 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day." 

These are what make the little children blessed, these 
Teachings back and down into the darkness for the hand 
of the God whom they have just left, and whom they 
still expect, and in whom they easily believe. 

Go asking for a Son of God, seeing how life is empty 
and sad and inexplicable without Him, ready and want- 
ing to believe in Him, and He shall surely come ; for 
He must come to every soul to which He can come. 
And if He seems to delay His coming, it is only that 
He may come more deeply and more richly. 

How will He come ? We go back to our story and 
read the third speech of the dialogue: "Who is He, 
Lord, that I might believe on Him ? " " Thou nast 
both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee." 
The teaching that seems to me to be here for us, is this, 
— that when Christ "comes," as we say, to a human 
soul, it is only to the consciousness of the soul that He 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



211 



is introduced, not to the soul itself ; He has been at the 
doors of that from its very beginning. We lose this 
out of our Christianity ; but really it ought not only to 
be in our Christianity, it ought to be our Christianity, 
— this certainty of an ever-present, ever-active Christ. 
We live in a redeemed world, — a world full of the 
Holy Ghost forever doing His work, forever taking of 
the things of Christ and showing them to us. That 
Christ so shown is the most real, most present power 
in this new Christian world. Men see Him, men talk 
with Him continually. They do not recognize Him; 
they do not know what lofty converse they are holding ; 
but some day when, in some of the ways we have been 
talking of to-night, a man has become really earnest 
and wants to believe in the Son of God, and is asking, 
" Who is He that I may believe on Him ? " then that 
Son of God comes to him, — not as a new guest from the 
lofty heaven, but as the familiar and slighted friend 
who has waited and watched at the doorstep, who has 
already from the very first filled the soul's house with 
such measure of His influence as the soul's obstinacy of 
indifference would allow, and who now, as He steps in 
at the soul's eager call to take complete and final pos- 
session of its life, does not proclaim His coming in aw- 
ful, new, unfamiliar words, but says in tones which the 
soul recognizes and wonders that it has not known long 
before, " Thou hast seen me. I have talked with thee. " 

This is Christ's conversion of a soul. " Say not in 
thine heart, Who shall ascend into Heaven ? (that is, to 
bring down Christ from above) : or, Who shall descend 
into the deep ? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the 



212 The Opening of the Eyes. 

dead). But what saith it ? The word is nigh thee, even 
in thy mouth and in thy heart : that is, the word of faith, 
that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord J esus 
and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised 
Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. " To open the 
eyes and find a Christ beside us, — not to go long jour- 
neys to discover a Christ with whom before we have had 
nothing to do, — this is the Christian conversion. 

To this every man who is living the new life at all 
will bear his witness. How did the Saviour first prove 
himself to you ? Was it not by the past which suddenly 
or gradually became full of Him, so that you recognized 
that He had been busy on you when you did not know 
it, that He had been leading you when you thought 
you had been wandering, so that you saw your past 
thoughts grow luminous as His inspirations, your past 
dreams as the contagions of His presence and the 
prophecies of His touch ? Was not this His answer 
when you called Him ? Not, " I am coming, " away off 
in the distance, but " Here I am, " spoken right out of 
the very soul and centre of your life ? 

I am not speaking merely of that general, beautiful, 
wonderful presence of the supernatural in and under 
and through the natural courses of human life of which 
all men are more or less aware, and which every now 
and then breaks forth, — which always gives the great 
ground swell of mystery to human existence. I do not 
wish to lose in vagueness the personal, clear, dear 
Christ. I mean that close to every man from his birth 
the Redeemer stands by His spirit with the great pur- 
poses of His redemption ; that He brings those purposes 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



213 



to bear upon the soul from the very first; and that 
when a man awakes up to know his need and calls for 
a Son of God, and then when he opens his eyes and 
sees the Christ beside him, the dearest part of it all is 
that it is not a Christ newly come, but the Christ who 
has cared for him from the beginning, ever since, nay, 
long before, he was born. " Thou hast both seen me, 
and it is I that talked with thee. " 

"Thou hast both seen me." How touching in this 
special story is the allusion to the light which the Lord 
had given only that day. Jesus reminds him of the 
lower mercy that He may assure him of the higher. 
" Thou hast seen Him with the eyes that I have opened. 
Let that be a pledge and earnest to thee that I can and 
will open yet other eyes, and thou shalt see Him more 
completely, more profoundly, in wonderful new ways. " 
Still, you see, it is as the Saviour of the past life that 
He offers Himself for the future. 

I love to think of this, that where men to-day are 
most unconscious of His presence, Christ is laying foun- 
dations for His future work. Here is a perfectly worldly 
man who cares nothing for Christ or Christianity, but 
yet Christ's touches are on him. He is surrounded 
with blessings ; he is pressed upon with sorrows ; he is 
led through apparently meaningless experiences; and 
all that some day, when he is really moved to cry out 
for a Son of God, Christ may be able to come to him, 
not new and strange, but with the strong claim of 
years of care and thought and unthanked mercy. It 
makes the world very solemn to think how much of this 
work Christ must be doing everywhere. It makes our 



214 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



own lives very sacred to think how much of it He may 
be doing in us. 

There have been great creative moments in the his- 
tory of the world, as all history and science seem to 
show, — moments when after long, silent preparations, 
suddenly the old order broke and a new, as if by magic, 
came into its place. So it has been in physical and 
social and political history. But in neither was there 
any magic. The same force which was in the last 
changing conviction had been in all the preparation. 
The flower is but the ripening of the same juices that 
built the stem. So it is with conversion to the very 
last. The Christ who in eternity opens the last con- 
cealment, and lays His comfort and life close to the 
deepest needs of the poor, needy, human heart, is the 
same Christ that first laid hands upon the blind eyes, 
and made them see the sky and flowers. 

It is a wondrous revelation of the Saviour. He 
comes to us by showing that He has been always with 
us. He finds the material of the Christian life in us, 
and builds it by His touch. Does this seem to lessen 
and depreciate His work ? Does it take from its abso- 
lute importance ? Do you ask what is the fate of the 
material if it is not used ? That He has answered Him- 
self in the Parable of the Talents. 

In words full of solemnity, Jesus summed up His 
whole impression of the story which we have been study- 
ing to-night. He declared the critical character which 
He brought into the world, — that men are tested by 
how they are affected by Him. How wonderfully deep 
His words are. "For judgment I am come into the 



The Opening of the Eyes. 



215 



world, that they which see not might see, and they 
which see might be made blind. " 

May we first know how blind we are, and then come 
to Him for sight, and then out of past mercy always win 
new trust, and so go on until at last we come unto the 
perfect Light. 



xin. 



THE BELOVEB PHYSICIAN. 

Luke, the beloved physician. — Colossians iv. 14. 

The eighteenth day of October has long been kept in 
the Church as the Festival of the Evangelist, Saint Luke. 
Once every year, upon this day, the Church has chosen 
to remind us that the third Gospel did not drop down 
from the stars, and did not spring up out of the earth ; 
but that it was written by a man, and is stamped with his 
personality ; that it is the description of the life of J esus 
through a special human medium ; and that it is good 
for us, in our sense of the preciousness of the Gospel, to 
remember and study and be grateful to the man who 
wrote it. 

No doubt the institution of a Saint Luke's day was 
meant to be a special commemoration of the evangelist. 
It is as the author of the Gospel that the Church is 
mostly interested in Saint Luke. That book is one of 
the four golden columns on which rest the Christian 
history. It is one of the four golden trumpets out of 
which has been blown the summons of Christ to the 
sons of men. And besides being one of four, it has also 
its own peculiar character. The reader of the Gospel 
of Saint Luke, if he has been intelligent and sympa- 
thetic, has always felt a sort of human breadth and 



The Beloved Physician. 217 

richness in it which, in kind at least, was peculiarly its 
own. It was not so Jewish as the others. The very 
fact that it is the Gospel in which we have most fully 
told the story of the Lord's nativity, and in which alone 
occurs the Parable of the Prodigal Son, is enough to 
show how well the Church does in commemorating 
always the man who wrote it. 

But it is not only as the writer of the Gospel that we 
know Saint Luke ; and though we shall not forget for 
a moment, while we speak of him, that he is the writer 
of the Gospel, it is with reference to what is told us 
of him in other associations that I want to speak to- 
day. It is not much. At a certain point in the book 
of the Acts of the Apostles the writer of the book be- 
gins to use the first personal pronoun " we, " in telling 
the story of the missionary journeys. At another cer- 
tain point he ceases to say "we," and falls back into 
the use of the third person. The first verse of that same 
book of Acts identifies its author with the author of the 
Gospel which bears the name of Luke. Between these 
two points, then, of which I spoke, Luke was the fellow- 
traveller and fellow-laborer of Paul who is the central 
figure of the larger portion of the book. During the 
time when they were thus together Paul wrote several 
epistles, among them two from his imprisonment at 
Rome, — one to the Church of the Colossians, and the 
other to his young disciple Timothy. In his letter to 
Timothy he says, " Only Luke is with me. " In his let- 
ter to the Colossians he uses the expression of my text, 
— " Luke, the beloved physician. " He says, " Luke, the 
beloved physician, and Demas greet you ! " 



218 



The Beloved Physician. 



That is almost all. By early tradition or by putting 
together incidental indications we are able to discern 
that Lucanus, as he was called in Latin, was a Gentile 
and a citizen of Antioch. All else is vague. Simply 
there came from among the men of Antioch one — a 
physician by profession — who travelled on his mis- 
sionary journeys with Saint Paul, and by and by, before 
he died, wrote at Saint Paul's suggestion the story of 
that life of J esus which lay at the back of all the teach- 
ing in which the missionary journeys were engaged. 

And yet there is something more ; for careful and in 
genious study has seemed to make it clear that Luke's 
character as a physician was a genuine and significant 
thing, and that it remained a strong and influential fact 
even after he became a missionary. His style, his 
choice of words, the special events of Christ's life 
which he selects for his narration, bear marks of the 
physician's habits of thought and speech; and an ex- 
ceedingly ingenious comparison of times has made it cu- 
riously appear that Luke on several occasions came to 
Saint Paul just when the great apostle was most over- 
come with weakness, or was just recovering from some 
one of the severe attacks which every now and then 
broke down his feeble strength. Indeed I think we feel 
in these words from the letter to the Colossians, " Luke, 
the beloved physician, " that Paul is speaking not merely 
of one who once had been, but of one who now was in 
practice of the art of healing. It is a present fact. It is 
a fact that excites affection. It is as a physician, among 
other things, that Luke travels with Paul from land to 
land or shares his long imprisonment at Rome. 



The Beloved Physician. 



219 



Nothing of this same sort, so far as I remember, is 
true of any of the other of the early converts and mis- 
sionaries of Christ. Of the professions of some of them 
we are told nothing; of others of them it would seem 
as if they left their former occupation and had no more 
to do with it after they had been converted. Of Luke 
alone it would appear as if he still continued to do as a 
Christian the same thing which he had done before he 
became Christ's disciple. In him alone we see what 
since his time has been the natural and normal type of 
Christian life, — the inspiration of a definite old occu- 
pation by a new spiritual power, so that it continued to 
be exercised, and showed its genuine capacity and ful- 
filled its true ideal. 

It is of this feature in the dimly-outlined story of 
Saint Luke that I wish to speak to you to-day. It sug- 
gests, I think, certain thoughts with reference first, to 
the general relation of the Christian life to men's occu- 
pations and professions, and then, to the special profes- 
sion with which the physician-disciple belonged. 

The disposition to find the simplicity of motive under 
the variety of action is one of the most familiar dispo- 
sitions of our time. The first man, the savage man, the 
child, looks at the world and fancies as many forces as 
he sees moving things. The brook running from the 
hillside, the branch waving in the breezes, the solemn 
procession of the stars across the sky, the fire bursting 
from the mountain's summit, the silent growth of corn- 
fields, and the noisy rush of the tornado, — every one of 
these to the barbarian is absolutely separate. He fan- 
cies a new force for each. He crowns in his imagina- 



220 



The Beloved Physician. 



tion one deity for the forest, and another for the fire, 
and another for the stream. It is one fruitful source 
of polytheism. And if, behind his multitude of dei- 
ties, there sits in his thought some mighty lord over 
all, it is his only to keep in order a distracted universe, 
and to curb his quarrelsome divinities that he may pre- 
serve some sort of disorderly and fragmentary peace. 
What is the progress from that first barbarism ? What 
is the maturity which comes out from that childishness 
of thought ? Is it not the suspicion first, and then the 
certainty, of some few great motive forces lying deep in 
Nature which at least shall take these multitudinous 
forms of action and combine them into groups ? What 
is the dream of him who watches this great grouping of 
the forms of action under the inspiration of a few great 
forces ? Is it not that some day — far hence but cer- 
tainly some day — these few great forces shall themselves 
be seen to be but utterances of one great force, vital 
enough to fill them all with vitality, and the complete 
simplicity of Nature be attained in the dependence of 
everything on some one first moving force, — when Na- 
ture herself shall become almost a real being standing 
at the centre of all life, and claiming all action out to 
the budding of the least flower and the waving of the 
lightest twig as a direct act of hers ? 

And now suppose we turn from the world of Nature 
to the world of human action. Is not the one a parable 
of the other ? Is not the world of human action, like 
the world of Nature, a scene of endless superficial vari- 
ety which by and by we learn to gather into unity under 
the power of some central inspiration ? One at his 



The Beloved Physician. 



221 



farm and another at his merchandise, one singing songs, 
one painting pictures, one pleading causes, one build- 
ing houses, and one making shoes, — here is this count- 
less diversity of human action. To the first observer 
that would seem to be everything. Each profession is 
a life by itself. It will have its own thoughts and 
standards, its own principles and passions, with which 
no other profession will have anything in common. So 
it is in certain crude communities where caste prevails. 
The caste of the shoemakers and the caste of the cooks 
have nothing to do with one anotntix. 

But that is only the first aspect, — the earliest form 
of human life. Very soon he who lives begins to feel, 
and he who watches begins to discover, some deeper 
forces which are working underneath and giving a real 
unity to all this seemingly incoherent life. The love 
of independence, the love of family, the love of fame, 
— these great elemental desires of humanity are what 
are making the lawyer plead his case, and the mason 
lay his blocks of stone. As you walk the streets with 
this truth in your mind the furious discord begins to 
deepen and condense itself to music. It sounds in va- 
rious strains to different men, and to the same man at 
different times, according as this or that one of the 
great dispositions of humanity is most dominant in the 
listener's soul ; but it is always rich and deep in pro- 
portion to the depths of the motive under which the 
soul tries to harmonize the discord. The deeper in the 
mass lies the point which you make your centre, so 
much the larger will be the portion of the substance of 



222 



The Beloved Physician. 



the mass which can group itself into a sphere around 
the point which you have chosen. 

And so the question will inevitably come into men's 
minds, How will it be if you can reach one point 
which is the genuine centre of the whole mass and 
behind all the other forces which come from part way 
in can feel one supreme force of which they all are 
only modifications and exhibitions, issuing from the 
very heart of all ? The dream of physics renews itself 
in morals. The physicist wonders whether perhaps all 
these special forces of heat and electricity and all the 
rest are only forms and phases of some great vital force 
which man shall some day find, and which, when it is 
found, shall perfectly account for all that goes on in the 
world of Nature ; so the moralist asks himself whether 
these partial forces, the love of the exercise of powers, 
the love of independence, the love of family, the love of 
fame, may not, if they be carried deep enough, be found 
to meet in and to issue from one central force, — the 
love of God, — of which they are the utterances, and in 
their common belonging to which they may find unity. 
If this could be, if man's pleasure in the exercise of his 
powers could be felt as the desire to realize the part of 
C d's nature which has been put forth in him, and the 
love of independence could seem to be the desire to re- 
late oneself directly to the source of life, and the love 
of family could become the echo of God's Fatherhood, 
and the love of fame could be made a seeking for God's 
glory, — if this could be, would not the unity of life be 
perfect ? Out from one central fountain of force — the 
soul's love for God as its Father — would flow the power 



The Beloved Physician. 



223 



which would first take form in all the variety of sec- 
ondary impulses which I have described, and then, at 
last, create all the endlessly various forms of activity of 
man ; so that everything which man had a right to do at 
all upon the earth might be ideally done as an expres- 
sion of it, — this central force, this love of man for 
God. 

Does it not change the aspect and feeling of his work 
in life, of that which we call his profession, when this 
which I have pictured as taking place some day univer- 
sally takes place for any man ? That which he has to 
do first, reaches inward to the heart of things — to the 
source of life — and finds its deepest motive. Then, 
that deepest motive reaches outward and becomes the 
inspiring force and the sufficient cause of what he has 
to do. If it has a real right to take hold of that deepest 
motive and say, " I am done because of it, " is not the 
man's profession glorified ? Is it not redeemed ? If it 
have drudgery connected with it (and where is the pro- 
fession which has not ?) is not its drudgery enlightened 
by this impulse from within, hy being made part of the 
working out into utterance of this transcendant force ? 
And is not its real unity with other professions, how- 
ever absolutely different they may be from it in form 
brought out and made vivid in their common relation 
to the source from which all spring ? And, what per- 
haps is more than all, the man's own life is harmon- 
ized; the general and special come to reconciliation. 
The glory and the detail of living cease to contend with 
and destroy each other. They begin to help each other. 
The talk about the way in which life is hindered by 



224 



The Beloved Physician. 



having to get a living is put to silence. These are the 
things which professional life needs, these three, — - the 
redemption of its drudgery, the establishment of sympa- 
thy with other professions, and the harmony of the ab- 
solute and universal with the relative and special ; and 
all of these must come when that which a man does in 
his profession reaches down and lays hold as its motive 
on the love of God. 

And now what is conversion? What was it that 
came to Luke of Antioch when suddenly or slowly by 
the preaching of Saint Paul he came to believe in the 
Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and all that the Incarna- 
tion meant ? We have his glowing book to tell us, we 
have the sweet and loving and triumphant story which 
he wrote of " all that J esus began both to do and teach 
until the day in which He was taken up. " But when 
we want to crowd it into one great word, I think we 
turn to what Paul the great apostle wrote — perhaps 
with Luke sitting by him at the time — to the Gala- 
tians: "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live 
by the faith of the Son of God. " Paul must have taught 
Luke the meaning of those words. Luke must have 
learned to say them of himself. Luke's work in life 
consisted, in part at least, of the physician's duty. 
Therefore Luke must have gone among his patients say- 
ing, "I do this by the faith of the Son of God." Tell 
me, when he could say that, was there no holier sacred- 
ness in the finger which he laid on the sick man's pulse ? 
Was there no truer sense of sympathy with the men 
whom he saw on every side of him engaged in other 
works than his ? Was there no calmer sense of recon- 



The Beloved Physician. 



225 



ciliation between the general conception of existence 
which must have filled a mind like his and his special 
labor of the hour, no truer mutual understanding be- 
tween the vast slow-heaving tide and the light waves 
which ran their races on its broad bosom when the sea 
of which they both were parts had given itself com- 
pletely into the power of the great attraction ? 

This is conversion. Suppose that there is nothing of 
it in the world to-day. Suppose that not a single man 
in all the world to-day knows Christ and all the love of 
God which Christ reveals; yet still the needs of life 
and the discovered aptitudes of various human creatures 
have created the professions and the trades, the tasks 
of life have been distributed and in their different 
groups, men are engaged in all these well-known occu- 
pations, — buying and teaching and digging and build- 
ing and carving and doctoring, — you know the familiar 
list. And then suppose that suddenly there is put in 
at the heart of all this human action, as a totally new 
thing, the warm fire of the love of God. Suppose it 
comes in an instant in its full-grown strength. How 
it will take at once the old chambers and fill them with 
itself! How it will pour itself forth through the old 
channels ! How they will become transfigured with 
the fire that will come burning through them ! How 
the old professions, remaining the same things, will 
be such different things from what they were before ! 
It will be as if you took a group of common men using 
the common human organs for most ordinary work and 
poured into each one of them the whole mind of Shakes- 
neare or the whole soul of Saint John. Still the old 

15 



226 



The Beloved Physician. 



physical machinery would be in use; but what words 
now those lips would speak which used to talk only 
of markets and of weather! What deeds now those 
hands would do that used to pull the wires of petty 
tricks ! The professions have no more real character in 
them than the lips or the hands have. They get all 
their character, all their glory or disgrace, from the 
purpose and nature of the men who live in them, and 
send whatever kind of vitality they may possess into 
effect through them. 

See then what are two at least of the effects that a 
true conversion (which means nothing less than the fill- 
ing of the man who is within the profession with an 
entire sense of the love of God and a profound love of 
answering gratitude in return) must have upon the pro- 
fessional and technical life, — the life in certain arts 
and occupations of which the world must necessarily 
be full. 

First, It must purify all the professions. It must re- 
ject and, as it were, turn away from each profession 
everything which is not capable of being filled and in- 
spired with this spirit. So it becomes a judgment for 
us all. It melts away the dross and leaves the gold. 
It makes the man, first of all, purely the thing he means 
to be, without admixture of base and foreign elements 
which are corruption. 

Then, secondly, It makes the professions to be no 
longer means of separation, but means of sympathy and 
union between men. My profession is totally different 
from yours. What then ? If we fasten our thoughts 
upon our diverse methods of activity, the harder each 



The Beloved Physician. 



227 



works in his profession the more our lives are separated 
each from each. If both of us feel always beating 
through our diverse methods of activity the common 
purpose of the love of God, then the harder we work in 
different ways the more our lives are one. This is the 
promise of a future in which specialized action shall 
not merely be consistent with but shall help forward 
the realized brotherhood of man. 

I look abroad upon the men who are gathered here 
this morning. I know how almost all of you are closely 
identified with some one among the many occupations 
and professions which together make up the active life 
of men. I know that not one of you who is at all 
thoughtful has failed to feel how this division of labor 
has its dangers. You have feared corruption, — that is, 
the loss or overlaying by baser accretions of the pure 
idea of your work ; and you have feared narrowness, — 
the loss of broad human sympathy in the inevitable 
provincialness of what you have to do. Where is your 
safeguard against these things which you fear ? Shall 
you give up the life of your profession and simply be a 
man at large ? That you cannot do ; and if you could it 
would not be good for most men, however it might an- 
swer for a few. Probably it would not be good for you. 
No, not by deserting your profession but by deepening 
it, by seeking a new life under it, by praying for and 
never resting satisfied until you find regeneration, — 
the new life lived by the faith of the Son of God ; so 
only can your life of trade or art or profession be re- 
deemed ; so only can it become both for you and for the 
world a blessed thing. The necessary labors which the 



228 



The Beloved Physician. 



nature of man and his relations to this earth demand, 
all done by men full of the love of God, and each 
using to its best the special faculty that is in him, 
— the world needs no other millennium than that; 
and that millennium, however far away it looks, is 
not impossible. 

I have spoken at length about professional life in 
general, and its effect upon the men who live it. Let 
me say a little, before I close, about the special profes- 
sional life of Luke, the beloved physician, especially 
as it is linked to the life of the Apostle Paul. As he 
and Paul are seen travelling on together over land and 
sea, those two figures taken together represent in a 
broad way the total care of man for man. Paul is dis- 
tinctively a man of the soul, a man of the spiritual life. 
We know him only in his spiritual labors. If he turns 
aside to tent-making, it is not for the sake of the tents 
which he can make, but simply that, earning his own 
living, he may be in true relations to the men whose 
souls he wants to save. Luke, on the other hand, is 
physical. His care is for the body. The two together, 
then, as we watch their figures, climbing side by side 
over mountains, sleeping side by side on the decks of 
little Mediterranean boats, standing side by side in the 
midst of little groups of hard-won disciples, — may we 
not say of them that they may be considered as recog- 
nizing and representing between them the double nature 
and the double need of man ? Body and soul as man is, 
the ministry that would redeem him and relieve him 
must have a word to speak to, and a hand to lay upon, 



The Beloved Physician. 



229 



both soul and body. The two missionaries together 
make a sort of composite copy of the picture which 
Saint Matthew gives us of Jesus going "about all Gali- 
lee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the 
Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of 
disease among the people. " 

It is interesting, I think, to see how this belonging to- 
gether of the two activities was so natural and genuine 
that they were not satisfied with being represented in 
two separate men, — each activity keeping its own man 
to itself, and the total being made up only by combina- 
tion of the two, — but tried to crowd themselves, as 
it were, both together into each man of the travelling 
company of two. Thus Luke the physician was a 
preacher and a teacher also, as well as Paul ; and as 
they journey together Paul is pondering, and no doubt 
sometimes discussing with his medical companion 
those great ideas of the sacredness of the body — the 
body the temple of the Holy Ghost — and the entire 
man, body, soul, and spirit, needing to be consecrated 
to God as one entire sacrifice, which he was always writ- 
ing in his letters to his churches. 

This need of unity in the care for man is always reas- 
serting itself. There is no true care for the body which 
forgets the soul. There is no true care for the soul 
which is not mindful of the body. The pressure of psy- 
chology on physiology, the wise and learned, also the 
unwise and ignorant, methods of reaching physical con- 
ditions through the change of mental states which are 
so prominent in the medical practice of to-day, bear 
witness to the first fact. All the kind of teaching 



230 



The Beloved Physician. 



which a few years ago went by the name of muscular 
Christianity gives testimony to the second. 

It certainly is not aside from the purpose if I beg you 
to remember how the two ought to go together in your 
treatment of your own lives. The duty of physical 
health and the duty of spiritual purity and loftiness are 
not two duties; they are two parts of one duty, — which 
is the living of the completest life which it is possible 
for man to live. And the two parts minister to one 
another. Be good that you may be well ; be well that 
you may be good. Both of those two injunctions are 
reasonable, and both are binding on us all. Sometimes 
on one side come exceptions. Sometimes a man must 
give up being well in order to be good. Never does an 
exception come upon the other side. Never is a man 
at liberty to give up being good in order to be well; 
but the normal life of man needs to be lived in obedi- 
ence to both commands. Both Paul and Luke — or 
rather the whole of Luke and the whole of Paul — must 
be its masters. 

The way in which the care for the body and the care 
for the soul belong together, the way in which Luke 
and Paul have the same work to do, is indicated per- 
haps by the similarity of the vices to which both minis- 
tries are liable. Theology and medicine, the minister 
and the doctor, make the same mistakes. Both of them 
are liable to lose sight of their ends in their means, 
and to elaborate their systems with a cruel heartless- 
ness, forgetting for the moment the purposes of mercy 
which are their warrant for existence. Thus theology 
has driven human souls into exquisite agony with its 



The Beloved Physician. 



231 



cold dissection of the most sacred feelings ; and medi- 
cine has tortured sensitive animals in a recklessness 
of scientific vivisection which has no relation, direct or 
indirect, to human good. Again both ministries to man 
have been misled from time to time into a sacrifice of 
the plain and primary obligations of truthfulness to 
what the minister or doctor has dared to think a higher 
obligation. That which with more or less of justice has 
been called Jesuitism in religion on the one side, and 
on the other side the physician's perversion or denial of 
the simple truth at the bed-side of his patient, — both 
of these moral wrongs, both of these indefensible sins, 
bear close relation to the sense of the sacredness of his 
trust which is in the heart of the modern Paul or Luke. 
And yet again, the narrowness of both, the stout and 
obstinate guard over their orthodoxy, the unwillingness 
that the work they loved should be done in any but the 
way that they approved, the anger with irregular prac- 
titioners, — who shall say which, the minister or the 
doctor, has borne the palm in these ? 

But if these close-united ministries share the same 
vices, and so prove that they are one, what a far richer 
testimony to their oneness lies in the virtues which 
they have in common. I have said this morning that 
every honest occupation was to be considered as a chan- 
nel of utterance for the divine life in the character and 
soul of the man who exercised it; but while this is 
true of all professions, there is still a difference in the 
degree of readiness and fulness with which different 
professions may give utterance to the inner fire. In 
some the crust of technical methods is more transpa- 



232 



The Beloved Physician. 



rent than in others. In some the volcano torch, out of 
which the inner fire is to blaze, is held up supremely 
high. May we not say this of the two works which we 
are to-day taking Paul and Luke to represent: that, 
first, they above all others demand, as of fundamental 
importance, character in the men who do them; and 
that, second, the element of merciful feeling and readi- 
ness for self-sacrifice which are incidental to most other 
occupations are essential and indispensable in these two? 
These are what really mark how divine they are, and 
how they belong together. Neither of them can pros- 
per with any true prosperity save in the hands of a man 
of goodness and of strength ; and in both of them the 
fountain of pity is the only source of pure and unfailing 
life. I add to this that both live constantly in the im- 
mediate presence of awful and mysterious forces; that 
both are always, while they see before them human 
need, feeling behind them that which, call it by what 
name they will, is Divine Power — is God ; and so are 
always pressed on by the demand for reverence and 
piety. 

I add again that while each has its immediate appeal 
to make to terror and the fear of pain, the ultimate 
address of each must be to ardent courage and enthu 
siastic hope. I put all these together and then the fig- 
ures of Paul and Luke walking together through history 
as the ministers of Christ, — the images of theology and 
medicine laboring in harmony for the redemption of 
man, for the saving of body, soul, and spirit, — become 
very sacred and impressive. May their fellowship be- 
come more generous and hearty as the years go on! 



The Beloved Physician. 



233 



May each gain greater honor for the other, and both 
become more humbly and transparently the ministers 
of Christ ! Thus may the two together, working as if 
they were but one, grow to be more and more a worthy 
channel through which the helpfulness of God may flow 
forth to the neediness of man. 



XIV. 



DEEP CALLING UNTO DEEP. 

Deep calleth unto deep. — Psalm xlii. 7. 

In one of the most spiritual of David's Psalms there 
come, almost incidentally as it were, the most striking 
pictures of external Nature. He begins by singing, 
" Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth 
my soul after Thee, 0 God. " Then he goes on to that 
profound remonstrance with his own oppressed and mel- 
ancholy heart. "Why art thou so full of heaviness, 
0 my soul ? Why art thou so disquieted within me ? 99 
And then comes his great appeal to God in Nature, — 
" Therefore will I remember Thee concerning the land 
of Jordan and the little hill of Hermon. Deep calleth 
unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts.'' It is 
partly a recollection of the causes of his gratitude. 
It is a remembrance of how Jordan and Hermon had 
witnessed God's goodness to him; but it is also the 
effort to lose his own spiritual vexations in the vast- 
ness and majesty of the scenes and the phenomena of 
natural life. He would put his own personal woe where 
the billows and the tides are sweeping and beating 
across one another, and make it sensible in their move- 
ment of the larger world of which it is a part, and in 
whose whole there is peace. 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



235 



This is the wa) r in which David's descriptions of Na- 
ture come about. He is no word-painter depicting the 
beautiful majestic world for the mere pleasure of the 
exercise of his literary skill. It is all a spiritual expe- 
rience. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
the firmament showeth His handiwork." It is God 
and peace and holiness which his soul is seeking when 
he climbs the mountain, or stands under the starry 
heavens, or is tossed on the tumult of the resistless 
sea. 

We all know something of what was in the great 
man's heart. We have all taken a sorrow or a perplex- 
ity out into the noontide or the midnight and felt its 
morbid bitterness drawn out of it, and a great peace 
descend and fill it from the depth of the majesty under 
whose arch we stood. It was not consolation. That 
can come only through the intelligence and reason, or 
through personal sympathy and love. The sweet and 
solemn influence which comes to you out of the noon- 
tide or the midnight sky does not take away your pain, 
but it takes out of it its bitterness. It lifts it to a 
higher peace. It says, "Be still and wait." It gives 
the reason power and leave and time to work. It 
gathers the partial into the embrace of the universal 
It fills the little with the large. Without mockery or 
scorn it reminds the small that it is small. The atom 
floating on the surface hears deep calling unto deep be- 
low, and forgets its own restlessness and homelessness 
in listening. 

This was what Nature in our Psalm is seen doing 
for the spiritual life of David. But that is not what I 



236 Deep Calling unto Deep. 



want to speak about to-day, although I could not help 
alluding to it as it gives so rich a character to our 
Psalm. 

I want to take now these words by themselves, — 
" Deep calleth unto deep, " — and let them suggest to us 
some thoughts with regard to man's relation to the 
world and his true way of living in it, which I hope 
will not be without their value. "Deep calleth unto 
deep. " It is the profound responsiveness of life which 
those words utter. If some great natural philosopher 
were to speak to us, no doubt he could tell us of the 
way in which even in physical nature what they suggest 
is true ; of how there is no force which does not corre- 
spond with other forces, and find the reason of its own 
existence in its relationship to them. For such a great 
rich topic as that, I have no fitness. But there is an- 
other responsiveness, — the responsiveness of the life of 
man, the responsiveness of the world and the human 
nature which inhabits it to one another, which is also 
worthy of our study. And it is of that that I desire to 
speak. 

How clear they are, and how they call and answer to 
each other, — the world and man! The world, — this 
aggregate of conditions and phenomena and events, this 
multitudinous complexity of things which happen as 
old habits to which the gray old earth has long been 
used, and other things which come with sharp and 
strange surprise and unexpectedness, as if they never 
had occurred before ; the world, — this crowd of circum- 
stances, with a certain subtle spirit and identity and 
law pervading it ; this world, living and yet dead, dead 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



237 



and yet living, — at one moment a thing of mere mate- 
rial of wood and rock and water, at the next moment a 
thing all instinct with quickness and vitality; the 
world on one side, and on the other man, sensitive and 
eager, ready to respond, often responding even when no 
one speaks to him, — man who seems sometimes to be 
only the chief of animals, sprung as it were out of the 
very substance of the world itself, and then at other 
times seeming to carry on his forehead the star of a 
supremacy and an authority almost divine, — this world 
and this man, behold them standing and looking each 
other in the face, and listening for one another's words ! 
The world hears the man. It answers him with its 
obediences. It responds to his advancing character. 
It holds its resources ready as he grows fit to call for 
them. But even more sensitively the man hears the 
world. The mass and crowd of things abound in in- 
fluences which pour forth and tell upon the human creat- 
ure's life. Its slightest wnisper fills him with emotion 
and works upon his sensitive will. Almost we can 
think of the angelic beings which are in the heavens, 
full of sympathy, bending and listening to this converse 
between man and his world, between each man and his 
circumstances, and knowing how it fares with him by 
the way in which they speak to him and the way in 
which he answers. 

But then, to take another step, when we look some- 
what closer at the world and at man, we find this 
other thing, — that both in the world and in man there 
are profounder and there are more superficial parts, 
there are depths and shallows ; and that it makes great 



238 



Veep Calling unto Deep. 



and most critical difference which part of the world it is 
that speaks to which part of the man. The world is deep 
or shallow. How deep it is ! What solemn and per- 
plexing questions come up out of its darknesses ! How 
it is always on the point of vast changes, terrible explo- 
sions ! How character is always being moulded by the 
powers which it contains ! How souls seem to change 
their whole nature as they pass through its furnaces! 
And yet change your point of view and what a shallow 
thing the world is ! How its changes chase one an- 
other almost like the idle alternation of joy and sorrow 
on the face of a child ! How much happens in the State 
and in society, and in the schools, which comes to 
nothing! What a waving of lights and jingling of 
bells and playing at hide-and-seek of waves upon the 
sea a large part of this perpetual activity appears. 

And not only the world but man as well is deep or 
shallow. How deep he is ! What struggles may tear 
the very foundations of his life asunder ! On the other 
hand, what peace which passeth understanding may lie 
like a great ocean underneath the surface turmoil of 
his days. How profoundly he can suffer; how pro- 
foundly he can enjoy ! What rich things are his con- 
science and his will ! And then, all of a sudden, when 
it seems as if all the universe were in him; when it 
seems as if he were as high as heaven and as low as 
hell ; when the music of his nature seems to be full of 
the intensest passion which out-goes expression, — how 
he will begin, all of a sudden, to chatter like a bird ! 
How nothing is too light for him ! How he will play 
with straws and chase shadows across the fields ! How 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



239 



he will make life a frolic, and refuse to be serious even 
when the heaviest shadows fill the solemn sky ! 

Thus both the two, — the world and man, whose con- 
verse with each other makes the history and poetry, the 
comedy and tragedy of this planet whereon we live, — 
both of them have their depths and their shallows. 
Each of them is capable of seeming profound and rich 
and serious or superficial and meagre and trivial And 
all this makes their talk with one another, their influ- 
ence on one another, endlessly interesting and pathetic. 
It is the noblest and completest form of their inter- 
course — the intercourse of the world and man — which 
has seemed to me to be suggested by the words from 
David's Psalm. When the strongest powers of man are 
brought out by the greatest exigencies of life; when 
what a man can do is tested to the very bottom by the 
most awful or splendid exhibition of what the world 
can be ; when a man stands amazed himself at the pa- 
tience and courage and resource which comes welling 
up in his soul at the demand of some great suffering or 
some great opportunity of his fellow-men, — could there 
be words which could describe the great scene better 
than these, " Deep calleth unto deep ? " 

It may be in the region of thought or in the region of 
action ; it may be a great problem awakening the pro- 
foundest intelligence, and saying, " Come, find my solu- 
tion," or it may be a great task summoning the active 
powers, and saying, " Come, do me ; " it may be in an 
excitement and a tumult which shakes the nature 
through and through, or it may be in a serene and 
open calmness which means more than any tumult. 



240 



Deep Calling unto Deep, 



The form is nothing ; the substance of the experience is 
everything. When the supreme demand of life calls out 
the supreme capacity of man, then it is that the pict- 
ure of the waves is fulfilled in spiritual life and " Deep 
calleth unto deep. " 

It is a great inspiring spectacle when this is seen 
taking place in a young man's life. There is a beauti- 
ful exhilaration in it. The mysterious world lifts up 
its voice and asks its old unanswered questions, — 
problems which have puzzled all the generations which 
have come and gone, lo ! they are not dead. They are 
still alive. They lift up their undiscouraged voice and 
ask themselves anew of this new-comer, and he with 
his audacious heart accepts their challenge. All that 
is most serious and earnest in him tells him that their 
answers must be somewhere. His clear eyes question 
them with hope. Perhaps he can find what all who 
have gone before have failed to find. So the best which 
the young man is leaps to wrestle with the hardest which 
the world can show ; so deep answereth to deep. 

At the other end of life the same thing comes, only 
in another way. When the great shadow of the earth 
lies on the old man's soul, and the light of the life be- 
yond is gathering in the western sky; when wonder 
deepens and great questions swarm and the supreme 
problem, " What does it all mean ? " stares out at him 
from all familiar things, — how often then a patience 
and a faith, a love and trust and spiritual certainty 
come forth which all the life has been preparing uncon- 
sciously ; and in the silent days which wait the end, the 
soul hears the eternity, and " Deep calleth unto deep. " 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



241 



I speak of notable periods which are, as it were, 
emergencies of life ; but I should be sorry to think that 
this dealing of the deepest part of us with the deepest 
part of the world were confined to critical occasions 
and solemn or enthusiastic days. I should be sorry not 
to think that there are lives in which it is habitual. 
There are men, not oppressed and gloomy, but serious 
and happy, whose deepest thought is always busy with 
the deepest things. Very unhappy is the man who 
never knows such converse. Happiest of all is he for 
whom it starts without surprise at any moment, who 
is always ready to give his deepest thought to deep- 
est questions and his strongest powers to the hardest 
tasks. 

This then is what we mean by deep calling unto deep. 
You see what kind of life it makes. There is another 
kind of life by contrast with which this kind may per- 
haps best be understood. There is a life to which the 
world seems easy, and so in which the strongest powers 
of the human nature are not stirred. I call that the 
life in which shallow calleth unto shallow. Like little 
pools lying in the rock, none of them more than an inch 
deep, all of them rippling and twinkling in the sun- 
shine and the breeze, — so lie the small interests of the 
world and the small powers of man ; and they talk with 
one another, and one perfectly answers the demands 
which the other makes. Do you not know all that ? The 
world simply as a place of enjoyment summons man 
simply as a being capable of enjoyment. The whole 
relationship gets no deeper than that. The material of 
pleasure or of pride cries to the power of pleasure or 



242 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



of pride, "Come, be pleased," or "Come, be proud." 
It is the invitation of the surface to the surface, — of 
the surface of the world to the surface of the man. 

What shall we say of this ? It is real. It is legiti« 
mate. In its degree and its proportion it is good ; but 
made the whole of life and cut off from connection with 
the deeper converse between the world and the soul, it 
is dreadful. The world does say to us, " Enjoy ;" and 
it is good for us to hear her invitation. But for the 
world to say, and for us to hear, nothing better or 
deeper than " Enjoy" is to turn the relation between the 
world and man into something hardly better than that 
which exists between the corn-field and the crows. It 
is clothing oneself with cobwebs. Only when the 
deeper communion, rich and full and strong, is going 
on below, between the depths of life and the depths of 
man, — only then is the surface communion healthy and 
natural and good. He who is always hearing and an- 
swering the call of life to be thoughtful and brave and 
self-sacrificing, — he alone can safely hear the other cry 
of life, tempting him to be happy and enjoy. 

But look ! What multitudes of men have ears only for 
the summons to enjoyment, who never once seem to 
hear the call to righteousness and self-sacrifice and 
truth. Look at the devotees of art to whom it is never 
more than a mere vehicle of pleasure. Look at the 
slaves of society who never make it their slave by 
compelling it to make them generous and good. Look 
at the business-men who never make anything out of 
their business except money. It is shallow calling 
unto shallow. It is the tinkling clatter of the lighter 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 243 



instruments with no deep thunder of the organ down 
below, and oh, how wearisome it grows ! 

But there are two other wrong and bad relations be- 
tween man and the world he lives in, which result of 
necessity from what we saw, — that both the world and 
man have their shallows and their depths. I have 
spoken of deep calling upon deep, which is great and 
noble; and of shallow calling upon shallow, which is 
unsatisfactory and weak. The words of David suggest 
to me also that there is such a thing as deep calling 
unto shallow, — by which I mean, of course, the pro- 
found and sacred interests of life crying out and find- 
ing nothing but the slight and foolish and selfish parts 
of a man ready to reply. There are a host of men who 
will not leave great themes and tasks alone and be con- 
tent to live trivially among trivial things. They are 
too enterprising, too alive for that. You cannot re- 
duce them to mere dilettantes of the galleries, or ex- 
quisites of the parlors, or book-keepers of the exchange ; 
they will meddle with the eternities and the profundi- 
ties. They have perception enough to hear the great 
questions and see the great tasks; but they have not 
earnestness and self-control enough to answer them with 
serious thought and strong endeavor ; so they sing their 
answer to the thunder, which is not satisfied or answered. 
This is what I mean by deep calling unto shallow. 

If you do not understand what I am thinking of, con- 
sider what you see in politics. Is there a greater call 
than that which comes out of the depths of a nation's 
needs ? " Tell me what this means, and that, in my ex- 
perience. Tell me how I shall get rid of this corrup- 



244 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



tion and that danger. Tell me how I can best be 
governed. Help me to self-control." These are the 
appeals which come out of the nation's heart of hearts. 
And what is it that they find to cry to ? In part, at 
least, are they not answered back by personal ambi- 
tions, by party spirit, by the trickery of selfishness, 
and by the base love of management? This is the mis- 
ery of politics, — the disproportion between the inter- 
ests which are at stake and the men and machineries 
which deal with them. Those interests need the pro- 
foundest thought and the most absolute devotion. In 
some degree they get it; but how often what they get 
is only prejudice and passion, — the lightest, least rea- 
sonable, most superficial action of our human nature. 

If we turn to religion, the same thing is true there 
as well. What does it mean when out of the profound 
realities of the soul, of God, of life, of death, of immor- 
tality, of duty, there rises to the surface and flaunts 
itself in the astonished gaze of men — what ? The ban- 
ner of a denominational pride, or the ribbons of a ritu- 
alistic decoration, or the rigidities of formal dogma. 
Listen to what men call a religious discussion. Is this 
captiousness, this desire to get the advantage of an ad- 
versary, this delight in making hits, this passion for 
machinery, this mixture of the false with the true, — 
is this the utterance in human speech of the overwhelm- 
ing dangers, the overwhelming opportunities of the soul 
of man ? The religious newspaper and the religious 
convention are often the least religious of all the jour- 
nals and meetings, the least exalted in their spirit, the 
most sordid and worldly in their tone. 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



245 



I find the same regarding truth of every kind. Truth 
and the search for truth are the great food and disci- 
pline of human nature. Good is it when a man, sweep- 
ing around some sudden corner of his life, sees looming 
up before him a truth which he has not known before. 
He has grown used to the old truth ; here is another of 
another kind. How great the moment is ! 

" Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken, 

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific, — and all his men 

Looked at each other with a wild surmise, — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

In the heart of the finder of the new truth, as in the 
heart of the discoverer of the new ocean, new chambers 
open for the new-comer to abide in ; new engineries of 
power leap to life for the new truth to use. All this 
sometimes. But sometimes also the new truth stirs 
nothing but new jealousies and vanities. A new law 
opens out of the complexity of Nature and sometimes 
— not often, let us be proud to claim — the naturalists 
stand quarrelling which it was that saw it first. A new 
view of life, a new religion which is very old, is brought 
by some disciple of it from his ancient home, and the 
best use which we can find to make of it is to use it for 
the attraction and stimulus of our flagging social ex- 
istence, to discuss it in our aesthetic clubs, and to pre- 
tend dilettante conversions to it before we have taken 
pains to understand what it really means. 

Everywhere the deep calls to the shallow, and the 
shallow answers with its competent and flippant tongue. 



246 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



It is earnest questions dealt with' by unearnest men 
and in unearnest ways which make a large part of 
the darkness of the world. "If he would only let it 
alone," we feel a thousand times when some flippant 
trifler takes up some solemn theme and turns it easily 
round and round between his thumb and finger. " Who 
are these that darken counsel by words without knowl- 
edge ? " The earnest man to match the earnest ques- 
tion ! When he comes how the light breaks ! Oh, my 
dear friends, I beg you listen to no other. When deep 
calls to deep, when the conscience and the spiritual 
earnestness of any man — whoever he be — talks with 
truth, draw near and listen, for you will surely get 
something; if not great wisdom, from the earnest 
talker, at least an atmosphere and light in which your 
own wisdom can work at its best. But when deep calls 
to shallow, when man deals with great truth in a little 
spirit and for ends of little selfishness and pride, then 
turn and go away ; for there there is no food or educa- 
tion for your soul. 

We have heard the deep calling to the shallow. Now 
let us turn for a few moments and, with another ear, 
listen to the shallow calling to the deep. All of our 
treatment of this imagery will, I am sure, show you 
what I mean by that. When the mere superficial 
things of life, which are all legitimate enough in their 
true places and enlisting their own kind of interest, as- 
pire to lay hold of man's serious anxiety and to enlist 
his earnest thought, then there is born a sense of dis- 
proportion just the opposite of that of which I have been 
speaking, — a disproportion which seems to be rightly 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 247 



described as the shallow calling to the deep. If we are 
offended when eternity calls to men, and men chatter 
about it as if it were a trifle ; so we also ought to be 
offended when some trifle speaks to them and they look 
solemn and burdened and anxious over it, and discuss 
it as if it were a thing of everlasting import. Have you 
never stood in the midst of the world of fashion and 
marvelled how it was possible that men and women 
should care, as those around you seemed to care, about 
the little conventionalities which made the scenery and 
problems of its life ? Natural enough questions many 
of them were, necessary, perhaps, that they should be 
settled one way or the other, but certainly questions to 
be settled in an instant and forgotten, — questions to 
be settled with the simplest powers and the least anx- 
ious thought. You meet your friend some morning and 
he wears an anxious face. You can seem to see into 
the depths of his being, and they all are stirred. You 
picture to yourself some awful woe which has befallen 
him. You seem to see him wrestling like Jacob in 
Peniel for his life. You stop him and ask what is the 
matter, and his answer tells you of some petty dis- 
turbance of the household, or some question of a bar- 
gain he has made, — whether it will turn out twenty-five 
or thirty per cent to his advantage. Are you not vexed 
with a vexation that is almost a sense of personal 
grievance ? The man has no right to conceive things in 
such disproportion. A man has no right to give to 
the tint on his parlor walls that anxiety of thought 
which belongs only to the justification of the ways of 
God to man. And why? Mainly, I suppose, because 



248 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



the man who has expended his highest powers upon the 
lightest themes has no new, greater seriousness to give 
to the great problems when they come, and so either 
avoids them altogether or else, by a strange perversion, 
turns back and gives them the light consideration 
which was what he ought to have given to his headache 
or the color of his walls. Yery often the man in whom 
the shallow calls to the deep is the same man in whom 
also the deep calls to the shallow. 

There is a noble economy of the deepest life. There 
is a watchful reserve which keeps guard over the pow- 
ers of profound anxiety and devoted work, and refuses 
to give them away to any first applicant who comes 
and asks. Wealth rolls up to the door and says, " Give 
me your great anxiety ; " and you look up and answer, 
" No, not for you ; here is a little half-indifferent desire 
which is all that you deserve. " Popularity comes and 
says, " Work with all your might for me ; " and you re- 
ply, " No ; you are not of consequence enough for that. 
Here is a small fragment of energy which you may 
have, if you want it ; but that is all. " Even knowledge 
comes and says, " Give your whole soul to me ; " and 
you must answer once more, "No; great, good, beau- 
tiful as you are, you are not worthy of a man's whole 
soul. There is something in a man so sacred and so 
precious that he must keep it in reserve till something 
even greater than the desire of knowledge demands it. " 
But then at last comes One far more majestic than them 
a ll ? — God comes with his supreme demand for goodness 
and for character, and then you open the doors of your 
whole nature and bid your holiest and profoundest devo- 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



249 



tion to come trooping forth. Now you rejoice that you 
kept something which you would not give to any lesser 
lord. Now here is the deep in life which can call to 
the deep in you and find its answer. 

Oh, my dear friends, at least do this. If you are not 
ready to give your deepest affections, your most utter 
loyalty to God and Christ, at least refuse to give them 
to any other master. None but God is worthy of the 
total offering of man ! Keep your sacredest till the most 
sacred claims. The very fact that you are keeping it 
unused will tempt its true use constantly, and by and 
by the King will take and wear the crown which it has 
been forbidden any less kingly head than His to wear. 

I think that there are men to-day who are living in 
exactly the condition I describe. Unable to find God 
and believe in Him in such Way that they can give 
themselves to Him, they yet know themselves to be 
possessed of powers of love and worship and obedience 
which it is not possible for them to exercise toward any 
but a God; therefore they hold these powers sacredly 
unused and wait. They know their lives imperfect; 
but they will not try, they will not consent, to complete 
them by restriction or degradation. If part of the great 
circle is yet wanting, they will hold the gap open and 
not draw the line in to fulfil a more limited circum- 
ference. To all such waiting souls sooner or later the 
satisfaction must be given. 

Thus I have tried to show how the proportions subsist 
or fail between the world we live in and the human 
soul. See what the various conditions are. Sometimes 
deep calls to deep, and man matches the profoundest 



250 Deep Calling unto Deep. 



exigencies with profound emotions and actions ; some- 
times shallow calls to shallow, and then there is the 
surface life of ordinary intercourse and easy careless- 
ness ; sometimes deep calls to shallow, and then you 
see men trifling with eternal things, and playing on the 
brink of awful truths ; sometimes shallow calls to deep, 
and then the powers which ought to wrestle with the 
mightiest problems are wasted on the insignificant 
whims and fancies of the hour. 

What is the issue of it all ? Does it not sometimes 
seem as if the struggle of man's history was toward the 
establishment of the true proportion between man and 
his world, and as if, when that were reached, every true 
man and his world would be saved ? There is a slow 
revelation going on by which men are learning that the 
effort and the purpose must have relation to each other. 
" Cast not your pearls before swine ; " " Render to Caesar 
that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is 
God's ; " " This ought ye to have done and not to leave 
the other undone, " — those are the words of Christ 
which teach the lesson of that proportion. He who 
hears those words cannot waste his soul's strength on 
trifles, nor can he think that the great prizes of life are 
to be had without a struggle, a self-denial, and a 
patient hope. 

There are abundant signs in Jesus of how completely 
that proportion was maintained in His own life. Men 
came to Him with selfish little questions about the 
division of inheritances, and He would not waste His 
time upon them; but Nicodemus came eager for spir- 
itual light, and Christ would sit all night and teach 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 251 



him. The people at Nazareth wanted to stone Him, 
and He quietly passed away and left them with their 
stones in their hands; but the cross demanded Him, 
and He went up to the terrible experience with a soul 
consecrated to endure it all, and spared Himself not 
one blow of the scourge upon the shoulders, and not 
one piercing of the nails into the hands and feet. He 
knew what was worth while; and He knew that be- 
cause He was one with God, the Son of God could not 
count the great little nor the little great. That was 
the secret of His perfect life. 

If we can live in Him and have His life in us, shall 
not the spiritual balance and proportion which were His 
become ours too ? If He were really our Master and 
our Saviour, could it be that we could get so eager and 
excited over little things ? If we were His, could we 
possibly be wretched over the losing of a little money 
which we do not need, or be exalted at the sound of a 
little praise which we know that we only half deserve 
and that the praisers only half intend ? A moment's 
disappointment, a moment's gratification, and then the 
ocean would be calm again and quite forgetful of the 
ripple which disturbed its bosom.. 

On the other hand, if we were His, could we help 
giving the anxiety which we refused to everything be- 
side, to spiritual things ? When the deep called, must 
not the deep reply ? 

My friends, there are things which it is a shame and 
an absurdity for any earnest man to care about with 
any serious care ; but there are other things about which 
a man must care or he is no real man. Whether he is 



252 



Deep Calling unto Deep. 



good and honest ; whether he is getting more truth and 
character; whether the world is better for his living; 
whether he is finding God, — God help us to care for 
those things with all our hearts. They are the things 
the care for which brings us into the company of noble 
souls. They are the things the care for which we never 
shall out-go; for for those things the souls of men 
glorified will still care, and talk of them upon the 
streets of heaven. 



XV. 



THE WINGS OF THE SEEAPHIM. 

Above it stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings ; with twain he 
covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he 
did fly. — Isaiah vi. 2. 

In the majestic vision of Isaiah the Lord J ehovah sits 
upon His throne, and around Him as He sits there stand 
mighty figures such as do not appear in just the same 
guise anywhere else in Scripture. Isaiah calls them 
" the seraphim. " They are not angels ; they are rather 
the expressions of the forces of the universe waiting 
there beside the throne of God. They are titanic be- 
ings, in whom is embodied everything of strength and 
obedience which anywhere, in any of the worlds of God, 
is doing His will. Since man is the noblest type of 
obedient power, these majestic seraphim seem to be hu- 
man in their shape ; but, as if farther to express their 
meaning, there are added to each of them three pairs of 
wings, whose use and disposition are with particularity 
described. 

It is from what is said about these wings of the sera- 
phim that I want to take my subject for this morning. 
You can see what right we have to treat the seraphim 
themselves as types and specimens of strength offering 
itself obediently to God. And if the highest attitude 



254 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



of any man's life is to stand waiting for what use God 
will choose to make of him, then we have a right to 
seek for something in the fullest life of consecrated 
manhood — of manhood standing by the throne of God 
— correspondent to each indication of temper and feel- 
ing which Isaiah shows us in the seraphim. 

How shall man stand, then, in a world where God sits 
in the centre on His throne ? This is the question for 
which I seem to find some answer in the picture of the 
mighty creatures, each with his six wings, — with two 
of which he covered his face, and with two he covered 
his feet, and with two he did fly. We gather so many 
of our impressions of humanity from poor stunted human 
creatures — poor wingless things who strut or grovel in 
their insignificance — that it will surely he good if we 
can turn for once and see the noblest image of conse- 
crated power, and say to ourselves, " This is what man 
is meant to be. This it is in me to be if I can use all 
my powers and let God's presence bring out in me all 
that it really means to be a man." 

Each of the three pairs of wings has its own sugges- 
tion. Let us look at them each in turn and see how 
they represent the three qualities which are the condi- 
tions of a complete, effective human life. 

With the first pair of wings, then, it is said that the 
living creature, standing before God, "covered his 
face. " There was a glory which it was not his to see. 
There was a splendor and exuberance of life, a richness 
of radiance coming from the very central source of all 
existence which, although to keep close to it and to 
bathe his being in its abundance was his necessity and 



The Wings of the Seraphim, 



255 



joy, he could not search and examine and understand. 
Th fvm was the incnniprehp,Tisih]pncss of G od ! 

We talk about God's incomprehensibleness as if it 
were a sad necessity ; as if, if we could understand God 
through and through, it would be happier and better for 
us. The intimation of Isaiah's vision is something 
different from that. It is the glory of his seraphim 
that they stand in the presence of a God so great that 
they can never comprehend Him. His brightness over- 
whelms them ; they cover their faces with their wings, 
and their hearts are filled with r everen ce, which is the 
first of the conditions of complete human life which 
they represent. 

We have only to think of it a moment to become 
aware how universal a necessity of human life we are 
naming when we speak of reverence, — meaning by it 
that homage which we feel for what goes beyond both 
our imitation and our knowledge, and shrouds itself in 
mystery. No man does anything well who does not 
feel the unknown surrounding and pressing upon the 
known, and who is not therefore aware all the time 
that what he does has deeper sources and more distant 
issues than he can comprehend. It is not only a pleas- 
ing sentiment, it is a necessary element of power, — 
this reverence which veils its eyes before something 
which it may not know. What would you give for the 
physician who believed that he had mastered all the 
truth concerning our human bodies and never stood in 
awe before the mystery of life, the mystery of death ? 
What would you give for the statesman who had no rev- 
erence, who made the State a mere machine, and felt 



256 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



the presence in it of no deep principles too profound for 
him to understand ? What is more dreadful than irrev- 
erent art which paints all that it sees because it sees 
almost nothing, and yet does not dream that there is 
more to see; which suggests nothing because it sus- 
pects nothing profounder than the flimsy tale it tells, 
and would fain make us all believe that there is no sa- 
credness in woman, nor nobleness in man, nor secret in 
Nature, nor dignity in life. Irreverence everywhere 
is blindness and not sight. It is the stare which is 
bold because it believes in its heart that there is noth- 
ing which its insolent intelligence may not fathom, and 
so which finds only what it looks for, and makes the 
world as shallow as it ignorantly dreams the world 
to be. 

When I say this, I know, of course, how easily corrup- 
tible the faculty of reverence has always proved itself 
to be. The noblest and finest things are always most 
capable of corruption. I see the ghosts of all the super- 
stitions rise before me. I see men standing with delib- 
erately blinded eyes, hiding from their inspection things 
which they ought to examine, living in wilfully chosen 
delusions which they prefer to the truth. I see all this 
in history ; I see a vast amount of this to-day and yet 
all the more because of this, I am sure that we ought to 
assert the necessity of reverence and of the sense of 
mystery, and of the certainty of the unknown to every 
life. To make the sentiment of reverence universal 
would be the truest way to keep it healthy and pure. 
It must not seem to be the strange prerogative of saints 
or cranks ; it must not seem to be the sign of excep- 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



257 



tional weakness or exceptional strength ; it must be the 
element in which all lives go on, and which has its own 
ministry for each. The child must have it, feeling his 
little actions touch the Infinite as his feet upon the 
beach delight in the waves out of the boundless sea that 
strike them. The mechanic must have it, feeling how 
his commonest tools are ministers of elemental forces, 
and raise currents in the air that run out instantly be- 
yond his ken. The scientist needs it as he deals with 
the palpable and material which hangs in the impalpa- 
ble and spiritual, and cannot be known without the 
knowledge of the mystery in which it floats. Every 
true scientist has it; Newton or Tyndal pauses a mo- 
ment in his description of the intelligible, and some 
hymn of the unintelligible, some psalm of delight in 
the unknown, comes bursting from his scientific lips. 
Every man holds his best knowledge of himself bosomed 
on an ignorance about himself, — a perception of the 
mystery of his own life which gives it all its value. 
You can know nothing which you do not reverence ! 
You can see nothing before which you do not veil your 
eyes ! 

But now take one step farther. All of the mystery 
which surrounds life and pervades life is really one 
mystery. It is God. Called by His name, taken up 
into His being, it is filled with graciousness. It is no 
longer cold and hard ; it is all warm and soft and pal- 
pitating. It is love. And of this personal mystery of 
love — of God — it is supremely true that only by rev- 
erence, only by the hiding of the eyes, can He be seen. 
He who thinks to look God full in the face and question 

17 



258 The Wings of the Seraphim. 



Him about His existence, blinds himself thereby, and 
cannot see God. He sees something, but what he sees 
is not God but himself. In Christ Himself there is the 
perpetual intimation of His ignorance. There is the 
3ontinual awe of a nature from the perfect knowledge 
of which the conditions of His human life excluded 
him. And if He could not know the Father perfectly, 
while He lived here in the flesh, shall we complain that 
we cannot ? Shall we not rather rejoice in it ? Shall 
it not be a joy to us to feel, around and through the 
familiar things which we seem perfectly to understand, 
the wealth and depth of Divinity, out-going all our 
comprehension ? 

Sometimes life grows so lonely. The strongest men 
crave a relationship to things more deep than ordinary 
intercourses involve. They want something profounder 
to rest upon, — something which they can reverence as 
well as love ; and then comes God. 

" Call ye life lonely ? Oh, the myriad sounds 
Which haunt it, proving how its outer bounds 
Join with eternity, where God abounds ! " 

Then the sense of something which they cannot know, 
of some one greater, infinitely greater than themselves 
surrounds their life, and there is strength and peace, as 
when the ocean takes the ship in its embrace, as when 
the rich warm atmosphere enfolds the earth. 

But I do not think that we have reached the fulness 
of Isaiah's description of reverence as one of the great 
elements of life until we have looked more carefully at 
the image which he sets before us. He says of the 



TJie Wings of the Seraphim. 



259 



seraphim not merely that their eyes were covered, but 
that they were covered with their wings. Now the wings 
represent the active powers. It is with them that move- 
ment is accomplished and change achieved and obedi- 
ence rendered ; so that it seems to me that what the whole 
image means is this, — that it is with the powers of ac- 
tion and obedience that the powers of insight and knowl- 
edge are veiled. The being who rightly approaches God, 
approaches Him with the powers of obedience held for- 
ward ; and only through them does the sight of God come 
to the intelligence which lies behind. The mystery and 
awfulness of God is a conviction reached through serv- 
ing Him. The more He is served the more the vastness 
of His nature is felt. The more obedience, the more rev- 
erence. That, I take it, is the meaning of Isaiah's sera- 
phim with their two wings covering their faces. 

Behold, what a lofty idea of reverence is here! It 
is no palsied idleness. The figure which we see is not 
flung down upon the ground, despairing and dismayed. 
It stands upon its feet ; it is alert and watchful ; it is 
waiting for commandments ; it is eager for work ; but 
all the time its work makes it more beautifully, com- 
pletely, devoutly reverent of Him for whom the work is 
done. The more work the more reverence. So man 
grows more mysterious and great to you, oh, servant of 
mankind, the longer that you work for him. Is it not 
so ? So Nature grows more mysterious to you, oh, nat- 
uralist, the longer that you serve her. Is it not so ? 
So God grows more sublime and awful as we labor for 
Him in the tasks which He has set us. Would you grow 
rich in reverence ? Go work, work, work with all your 



260 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



strength; so let life deepen around you and display its 
greatness. 

Poor is the age which has not reverence. Men say 
it sometimes of this age of ours. But just because it is 
an age of active over-running work, I cannot, I do not 
believe that it is really so. At least, I feel sure that 
it cannot be so in the end. Its work may make it at 
first arrogant and merely trustful of itself. A little 
work like a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It 
may not easily and all at once submit to be obedient ; 
but as it goes deeper and touches more mighty tasks it 
must come into the presence of the power which is be- 
hind all powers, and feel God. Until it does that it 
may trifle, it may grow profane; but all the time it 
is on the way to reverence, the highest reverence, — the 
reverence which comes not by idle contemplation, but 
by obedient work. 

Poor is the soul which has not reverence ! You may 
have many powers and gifts, but if you have not rever- 
ence there is a blight upon them all. Only be sure you 
seek for reverence aright. Not by shutting your eyes 
to God or any of His truth, but by spreading your wings 
before your eyes, by putting your active powers in the 
forefront of your life, by doing your work as deeply, in 
as true a sense of obedience to God, as possible, so shall 
you touch the Infinite, and live in a serene and cheerful 
awe. The veiling of intelligence with obedience shall 
give it light and not darkness. The reverence which 
comes in service shall be not paralysis, but strength. 

Let us pass on to the second element in Isaiah's 
image of a strong and consecrated life. With twain of 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 261 



his wings, he says, each of the seraphim " covered his 
feet. 99 The covering of the feet represents the covering 
of the whole body. As the covering of the face means 
not seeing, the covering of the feet means not being 
seen. It signifies the hiding of oneself, the self-efface- 
ment which belongs to every effective act and every 
victorious life. 

Here is a man entirely carried away by a great en- 
thusiasm. He believes in it with all his soul. His 
heart and hands are full of it. What is the result ? 
Is it not true that he entirely forgets himself ? Whether 
he is doing himself credit or discredit, whether men 
are praising him or blaming him, whether the comple- 
tion of the work will leave him far up the hill of fame 
or down in the dark valley of obscurity, he literally 
never thinks of that. He is obliterated. It is as if he 
did not exist, but the work did itself, and he was only 
a spirit to rejoice in its success. Some morning the 
work is done. It is successful ; and he is famous and 
amazed. Another man's work is all filled with self- 
consciousness. He never loses himself out of it for a 
moment. It may be a noble self-consciousness. He 
may be anxious all the time that the work he is doing 
should make him a better man ; but the work is weak 
just in proportion as he thinks about himself. It is 
strong just in proportion to his self-forgetfulness. 

Is it not so ? Consider your own lives. Have you 
not all had great moments in which you have forgotten 
yourselves, and do you not recognize in those moments a 
clearness and simplicity and strength which separates 
them from all the other moments of your life ? There 



262 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



was a moment when you saw that a great truth was true 
and accepted it without asking what the consequences 
of its acceptance to your life might be. There was a 
moment when you saw a great wrong being done, and 
resisted it with an impulse which seemed to be born 
directly out of the heart of the eternal justice and had 
nothing to do with your personal dispositions, — hardly 
anything, even, with your personal will. There was 
a moment when you were in battle ; and whether you 
lived or died was unimportant, but that the citadel 
should be taken was a necessity. Those are the great 
moments of your life. 

The man who forgets himself in his work has but one 
thing to think of, — namely, his work. The man who 
cannot forget himself has two things to think of, — his 
work and himself. There is the meaning of it all. 
There is the distraction and the waste. The energy 
cannot be concentrated and poured in directly on its 
one result. Who wants to see a governor, whose whole 
thought might be given to the welfare of the State, for- 
ever pulled aside to think how what he proposes to do 
will affect his popularity, his credit, his chance of be- 
ing governor again ? My friend comes and sits down 
beside me, and begins to give me his advice. I listen, 
and his words are wise. I am just catching glimpses 
of his meaning and seeing how there may be truth in 
what he tells, when suddenly there breaks out through 
his talk a lurid flash which spoils it all. The man is 
thinking of himself. He is trying to be wise. He is 
remembering how wise he is. He is trying to impress 
me with his wisdom; and so his power is gone. A 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



263 



student sits and seeks for truth, but mingled with his 
search for truth there is a seeking after fame or some 
position; and truth hides her deepest secrets from a 
man like him. So everywhere the noblest streams 
grow muddy with self-consciousness. Only here and 
there a stream refuses to be muddied; and then, 
whether it be great or small, a mighty torrent or a sil- 
ver thread of quiet water, in its forgetfulness of self it 
flows on to its work, and makes men's hearts joyous 
and strong. Efface yourselves, efface yourselves; and 
the only way to do it is to stand in the presence of 
God, and be so possessed with Him that there shall be 
no space or time left for the poor intrusion of your own 
little personality. 

Here also, as before, it is possible to follow out the 
image of Isaiah. Here, as before, it may mean some- 
thing to us that the feet are not merely covered, but 
covered with the wings. The wings, we saw, meant the 
active powers ; and so the meaning is that the thought 
of oneself is to be hidden and lost behind the energy 
and faithfulness and joy of active work. I may deter- 
mine that I will not be self-conscious, and my very de- 
termination is self-consciousness ; but I become obedient 
to God, and try enthusiastically to do His will, and I 
forget myself entirely before I know it. It is not be- 
cause men make so much of their work that their work 
makes them vain and fills itself with secondary thoughts 
of their own advantage ; it is because they make so 
little of their work, because they do not lift themselves 
up to the thought of obedience to God. The efface- 
ment of self is not to come by sinking into sleep, but 



264 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



by being roused into intensest action at the call of God, 
— by a passionate desire that His will should be done, 
whether by us or by another. When that is in our soul, 
we shall do the part of His will which is ours to do, and 
in our eagerness for the doing of the work forget the 
worker. Here is the true death of personal ambition, 
into the higher life of desire for the attainment of re- 
sults. "Pere Jandel is myself without the inconven- 
ience of myself," said Lacordaire when his brother-monk 
was elevated above himself to the master-generalship of 
their order. Behind the wings the feet are growing 
always strong and beautiful. Within the obedience the 
obedient nature is growing vigorous and fair; but its 
own growth is not its purpose, and by and by when the 
obedience* is complete, the soul itself most of all is sur- 
prised at the unguessed, unhoped-for life which has 
come to it in its voluntary death. 

This its the history of all self-sacrifice, of all the mar- 
tyrdoms, of all the crosses. This is what is going on in 
the sick-rooms where souls are learning patience, and on 
battle-fields where brave young soldiers are fighting for 
the truth. This is what true life does for true men 
as the years go on. Work for God somewhere, in some 
form, takes gradual possession of a man until at last the 
thought of self, even in its highest interests, has passed 
away. It seems to be dead, and only wakens into con 
scious life again when the great salutation greets it at 
the end, " Well done, good and f aithful servant. Thou 
hast been faithful. Enter into My joy." Then the 
wings part, and the uncovered feet walk by the river of 
the water of life. 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



265 



One pair of wings remains. After the twain which 
hid the face of the seraph, and the twain which hid his 
feet, Isaiah says still, "And with twain did he fly." 
We have spoken of obedience as the method of re- 
verence, and of obedience as the method of self- 
effacement ; but here there comes the simpler and per- 
haps the healthier thought of obedience purely and 
solely for itself, — the absolute joy and privilege of 
the creature in doing the Creator's will. 

" His state 
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest." 

So sang the poet of divinity. And though he goes on 
to turn his great truth into consolation of his own afflic- 
tion, yet in the lines themselves we cannot help feeling 
a true and simple joy in the great glory of a universe 
all thrilled and beaten with the wings of hurrying 
obedience. 

To live in such a universe of obedient activity, to feel 
its movement, to be sensible of its gloriousness, and yet 
to make no active part of it would be dreadful. Milton 
felt this, and in his last great line was compelled to 
pierce down to the deepest truth about the matter, and 
assert that he too, even in his blindness, had share in 
the obedience of the untiring worlds. 

" They also serve who only stand and wait." 

Here is the deepest reason, here is the reasonable 
glory of that which is perpetually exalted and belauded 
in cheap and superficial ways, — the excellence of work, 
the glory of activity. Many of our familiar human in- 



266 The Wings of the Seraphim. 



stincts live and act by deeper powers than they know. 
That which is really the noble, the divine element in 
the perpetual activity of man is the sympathy of the 
obedient universe. The circling stars, the flowing 
rivers, the growing trees, the whirling atoms, the 
rushing winds, — all things are in obedient action, 
doing the will of God. It is the healthy impulse of 
any true man who finds himself in this active world to 
share in its activity. It is the healthy shame of any 
true man to find himself left out, having no part in that 
obedience which keeps all life alive. 

This is the power of the flying wings, — the simple 
glory of active obedience to God. Somewhere, in some 
sphere, to do some part of the Eternal Will, to bear some 
message, to fulfil some task, — no human being can be 
complete, no human being can be satisfied without that. 
You may have the face-covering wings and hide your 
eyes behind them, — that is, you may be full of rever- 
ence ; you may feel most overwhelmingly the majesty of 
God ; you may stand all day in the most sacred place, 
crying, "Holy, holy, holy," through the clouds of in- 
cense all day long. You may have the feet-covering 
wings ; you may efface yourself ; you may tear out the 
last roots of vanity from your life; you may mortify 
your pride; you may even deny facts in your eager 
depreciation of yourself ; but reverence and self-efface- 
ment come to nothing unless the spirit of active 
obedience fills the life. 

I think this appears to be ever more and more criti- 
cally true. If a man wants to do God's will, there can 
be no misbelief in him so dangerous as to be his ruin, 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



267 



there can be no prison of false sentiment or feeling in 
him that is not already being cast out. It is not that 
belief is unimportant. . God forbid ! Belief is of the 
very substance of the life. "As he thinketh in his 
heart, so is he. " It is not that false feelings, pride, and 
self-consciousness are insignificant. They are the soul's 
corruption and paralysis. But it is that through active 
service, through the will to do God's will, belief is ever 
struggling to become true, and feeling is ever strug- 
gling to grow healthy. No man is fool enough to think 
that an active arm and a big muscle can be a substitute 
for a slow beating heart or a torpid brain. It is to set 
the dull brain thinking and the slow blood running that 
you take your exercise. Not as a substitute for doctrine 
or for love, but as a means of both, the Christian says, 
" 0 Lord, what shall I do ? " And so his act of service 
has in it all the richness of faith not yet believed, and 
love not yet kindled into consciousness. 

There are two extremes of error. In the one, action 
is disparaged. The man says, " Not what I do but what 
I am is of significance. It is not action. It is charac- 
ter. " The result is that character itself fades away out 
of the inactive life. In the other extreme, action is 
made everything. The glory of mere work is sung in 
every sort of tune. Just to be busy seems the sufficient 
accomplishment of life. The result is that work loses 
its dignity, and the industrious man becomes a clatter- 
ing machine. Is it not just here that the vision of the 
wings comes in ? Activity in obedience to God. Work 
done for Him and His eternal purposes. Duty con- 
scious of Him and forgetful of the doer's self, and so 



268 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



enthusiastic, spontaneous, — there is the field where 
character is grown, there is at once the cultivation of 
the worker's soul and the building of some corner of 
the Kingdom of God. 

Oh, my young friends, listen to the great modern Gos- 
pel of Work which comes to you on every breeze, but do 
not let it be to you the shallow, superficial story that it 
is to many modern ears. Work is everything or work 
is nothing according to the lord we work for. Work 
for God. Let yourself do no work which you cannot 
hold up in His sight and say, " Lord, this is Thine ! " 
and then your work indeed is noble. Then you are 
standing with your flying wings which will assuredly 
bear you into fuller light as they carry some work of 
God toward its fulfilment. 

These then are the three, — reverence and self-for- 
getfulness and active obedience, — " With twain he 
covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, 
and with twain he did fly. " It is because of irrever- 
ence and self-conceit and idleness that our lives are 
weak. Go stand in the sight of God and these wings 
of salvation shall come and clothe your life. They per- 
fectly clothed the life of Jesus. Reverence and self- 
sacrifice and obedience were perfect in Him. In the 
most overwhelmed moments of His life, — crushed in 
the garden, agonized upon the cross, — he was really 
standing, like the strong seraphim, at the right hand 
of God. 

You want to be strong. Oh, be strong in the Lord 
and in the power of His might, — strong as He 



The Wings of the Seraphim. 



269 



was by reverence and self-surrender and obedience. 
The opportunity for that strength is open to every 
man who bears a soul within him, and over whom is 
God, and around whom is the world all full of duty and 
need I 



XVI. 



THE PLANTER AND THE RAIN". 

He planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. — Isaiah xliv. 14. 

The Prophet is telling us how men make idols. He 
pictures the whole process. He describes the planting 
of a tree upon the hill-side, its growth into full size and 
strength, its being cut down and made into fuel, the 
comfort which it gives its owner as it burns upon the 
hearth, and then how " the residue thereof he maketh a 
god, even his graven image." What is on the Prophet's 
mind is the indiscriminateness, the lack of separateness 
and sanctity in that which is put to sacred uses. It 
is but the refuse and residue of ordinary life that is 
given to religion. We will not try to follow the Prophet 
in this line of his thought to-day; rather let us dwell 
on one idea which is incidentally suggested by what he 
says. In the course of his story he depicts the growing 
of a tree. " He planteth an ash, and the rain doth nour- 
ish it. " It is the same thing going on long ago in old 
Judea which has gone on since man began to live upon 
the earth, which is going on everywhere to-day. The 
civilized and cultivated tree is the joint product of hu- 
man care and the earth's fertility. Man puts the seed 
into the ground, and then the ground, made fruitful by 
rain and sunshine, does the rest. Man has the initia- 



The Planter and the Rain. 



271 



tive, but he does not follow out what he begins to its 
fulfilment. It is taken out of his hands. The great 
machinery of Nature appropriates it, and by and by 
the full-grown product does not belong alone to him 
or to Nature, but is the work of both together, — of his 
designing and of Nature's execution. "He planted 
the ash, and the rain did nourish it." 

The words have in them that, I think, which immedi- 
ately harmonizes with the large and general feeling 
which we all have about the way in which things grow 
in the world. Partly by deliberate choice, and partly by 
what seems to be automatic action ; partly by man giv- 
ing orders to Nature, and partly by Nature carrying 
out the suggestions of man ; partly by human will, and 
partly by natural force, — so it appears to us as if the 
operations of the world went on. Sometimes one ele- 
ment and sometimes the other seems most prominent, 
according to the observer's general nature or special 
mood. But, behold! here is a recognition of them 
both, and a blending of the two. Here is man the de- 
viser, the conceiver, and here is the great system of the 
universe taking his devise or conception at his hands 
and carrying it forward to its full development. Let us 
study the picture which is thus set before us, and see 
how true it is to what the world contains. 

We may ask ourselves how it is that any institution 
or established form of human living comes to be preva- 
lent and dominant. We cannot often — perhaps we can 
almost never — trace the process, but we know what it 
must be. A strong idea, of freedom, of justice, of 
mercy, enters into some strong man's soul. It makes 



272 



The Planter and the Rain. 



itself completely his. Then it will not be satisfied with 
him; it grows restless within him and demands the 
world. Then he takes it out some day and plants it. 
With some vigorous, incisive word or deed he thrusts 
his live and fiery idea down deep into the fruitful soil 
of human life. Then human life takes up his idea and 
nourishes it. Wonderfully all the forces gather around 
it and give it their vitality. History bears witness that 
it has all been living by the power of that idea un- 
known, unguessed ; philosophy says that in it lies the 
key of her hard problems; economy discovers that by 
it life may be made more thrifty and complete ; poetry 
shows its nobleness ; affection wreaths it with love ; all 
the essential hopes and fears and needs of human na- 
ture come flocking to it ; until at last you can no more 
conceive of human life without that idea than you can 
think with complacency of the landscape without the 
great tree which is as thoroughly a part of it as is the 
very ground itself. A free church, a just court, a pop- 
ular government, — this is the way in which every in- 
stitution comes to be. It is the thought of a man set 
into the great system of human life, claimed by that 
system, fed by it, becoming so thoroughly the possession 
of that system that it quite forgets the mind in which 
it first sprang, but yet being through all its long per- 
petual life the result of both, — of the hand that planted 
it, and of the elements which fed it into its full result 
— the ash-tree which the man planted, and the rain 
nourished. 

Here is the relation of the world's few great creative 
men to the great mass and body of its life. Helpless 



The Planter and the Rain. 



273 



would the great general humanity be without their 
pregnant thoughts; helpless would they be for all 
their pregnant thoughts without the great general hu- 
manity in which to plant them. Helpless Europe 
without Martin Luther. Helpless also Martin Luther 
without Europe. The idea may be the richest and the 
truest ; without the human heart to plant it in, it comes 
to nothing. The human heart may be tumultuous with 
fructifying power ; if it have no idea to work upon, it 
tears itself to pieces with its purposeless fermentation. 
Here is the mutual need of great souls and the great 
world. Here is where they must learn to respect and 
to be thankful for each other. Here must be their 
escape from all grudges and jealousies and weak 
contempt. 

This may serve for our first illustration of the truth 
we have to study. We have another, even more strik- 
ing, close at our hand in the way in which character 
grows up in our personal nature. Where do our char- 
acters come from ? It is easy sometimes to represent 
them as the result of strong influence which other men 
have had over us. It is easy at other times to think of 
them as if they made themselves, shaping themselves 
by mere internal fermentation into the result we see. 
But neither account tells the story by itself. We know 
that it does not. When we question ourselves, not 
about character in general, but about special points and 
qualities of character, then we are sure that it was by 
some outer influence made our own, some seed of mo- 
tive or example set into our lives and then taken pos- 
session of by those lives and filled with their vitality, 

18 



274 



The Planter and the Bain. 



developed into their own type and kind of vice or 
virtue — it was thus that this which is now so intimate 
that we call it not merely ours but ourselves came into 
being. This is the reason of the perpetual identity 
along with the perpetual variety of goodness and bad- 
ness. We are all good and bad alike; and yet every 
man is good and bad in a way all his own, — in a way 
in which no other man has ever been bad or good since 
the world began, — just as all ash-trees are alike be- 
cause they have all been planted from the same nurs- 
eries; and yet every ash-tree is different from every 
other because it has grown in its own soil and fed on its 
own rain: the society and the individuality of moral 
life. 

Of course what I am saying is true both of the evil 
and of the good which is in us. It is true of the evil. 
Here is the bad man. Here is the thief. How did he 
grow bad ? How is he bad to-day ? He cheats himself 
if he tries to believe that he is bad because of a constant 
outside influence which holds him every moment, and 
thinks that if that influence were taken off he instantly 
would flee to goodness. The evil in him is vastly 
more his own, more himself, than that ; and yet it did 
come into him from without. He did not invent rob- 
bery. The temptation dropped in through the open 
channel of the eye or ear; but, once in, it became his. 
It became he. His nature seized it ; his passions col- 
ored it ; it turned its growth in the direction of his am- 
bitions. How harmless the temptation without him! 
How innocent he but for the temptation! 

Or is it goodness and not. evil? Still the same thing 



The Planter and the Rain. 



275 



is true. You have absolutely forgotten what suggestion 
it was which first brought to your thought the idea of 
self-conquest, or of knowledge, or of charity, which is 
now your very life of life. Was there ever a time when 
you were destitute of it ? Is it possible that other peo- 
ple have it too, this which is so especially and ab- 
solutely your own ? How far away seems the time, as 
your strained memory recovers it, when some dear 
hand dropped into your soft, young life the seed which 
has grown richly into this ! The lips which spoke the 
word which was the New Word of your life have with- 
ered beneath the tombstone long ago. The father or 
the mother who said to you, " Be brave, be true, " have 
gone on themselves deep into the courage and truth of 
eternity. But what then? Does the harvest-field re- 
member the bright morning when the sower walked in 
the brown furrows and scattered the seed ? It is not 
what stays in our memories, but what has passed into 
our characters that is the possession of our lives. The 
long-forgotten deed or word was caught up into your 
life. Everything in you was different because of it. 
And here it is in you to-day ; not a seed any longer but 
a tree, not an influence but a character, yet carrying in 
itself forever the virtue of its double history, — that it 
came into the nature and that it became the nature ; for 
we are parts of the great whole, and we are wholes 
ourselves. 

So it is that men become good or bad. Such is the 
germ-theory of character. So credit and blame are in- 
tricately interwoven and shared between our circum- 
stances and ourselves; and yet it must not be forgotten 



276 



The Planter and the Bain. 



to be said, this does not make our natures indiscrimi- 
nate. It is not true that they lie waiting equally in- 
different and ready to give growth to the evil and the 
good. The truth above all others which Christ came 
to declare was that the human nature had its prefer- 
ence ; that it preferred the good, and gave its best fos- 
tering to that. Forced to bestow its growth-power on 
the evil if the evil was forced upon it, it felt that to 
be a violence. It lived in slavery while it did that. 
It hated the work it had to do, for its real nature was 
to serve the good. It struggled to cast out and to re- 
fuse the evil. It was to claim that for it and to tempt 
it to do that that Jesus came. That refusal of the 
power of growth to strengthen and vivify the bad was 
complete in Him. Only the good that came to Him 
commanded His strength. And ever our nature strug- 
gles more and more to be what His was and is, who was 
and is the perfect man ! 

The truth which I am preaching has its clearest illus- 
tration, it may be, in the way in which God has sent 
into the world the Gospel of His Son. Most sharp and 
clear and definite stands out in history the life and 
death of Jesus Christ. The skies are broken at one 
special point. The print of the divine footstep is on 
one special spot of earth. The Son of Man comes at 
one special date, which thenceforth shines supremely 
luminous among the years. It was the entrance of a 
new, divine force into the world. But what has been 
the story of that force once introduoed ? You have 
only to read the history of Christendom and you will 
see. It has been subjected to the influences which 



The Planter and the Rain. 



277 



have created the ordinary currents of human life. The 
characters and thoughts of men have told upon it. The 
Gospel has shared in the fortunes of the Christian 
world. It has followed in the track of conquering 
armies; it has been beaten back and hindered by the 
tempests of revolution and misrule ; it has been tossed 
upon the waves of philosphical speculation ; it has been 
made the plaything or the tool of politics; it has 
taken possession of countries and centuries only by takv 
ing possession of men through the natural affections of 
their human hearts ; it has worked through institu- 
tions which it only helped to create. While it has 
helped to make the world, it has also at every moment 
been made by the world into something different from 
its own pure self. It has been carried forward on the 
tide of human progress to which it was always itself 
giving its greatest force and volume. A divine gift to 
the world, then when once given made in large degree 
subject to the nurturing conditions of the world to 
which it had been given — what but this has been the 
Gospel of God's grace ? Is not its story told in the 
words of this old parable ? " He planteth an ash, and 
then the rain doth nourish it." 

If you try to take either half of the truth by itself, you 
get into the midst of puzzle and mistake. Think of the 
Gospel simply as an intrusion of divine force kept apart 
from any mixture with the influences of the world, and 
it is impossible to understand the forms in which it 
has been allowed to present itself. Its weaknesses and 
its strength are alike unintelligible. Think of it as 
a mere development of human life, and you cannot 



278 



Th.e Planter and the Rain. 



conceive how it came to exist at all. But consider it 
in its completeness. Remember that it is a divine 
force working through human conditions ; see it flowing 
through the deep channels of the universal human needs ; 
hear it summoning to its standard the eternal human 
hopes and fears ; let it be all one long incarnation, God 
manifest in the flesh, — a true God, with the real strength 
of Godhood manifest in a true flesh, cumbered by its 
hindrances and at the same time made utterable through 
its sympathies, — and then you see at once why it is so 
weak, and why it is so strong ; why it has not occupied 
the world with one lightning flash of power, and why it 
must at last, however slowly, accomplish its complete 
salvation. 

Oh, wondrous tree, whose seed came surely from the 
hand of God, whose growth has never passed out of His 
watchful care, which He has set here in this rich, way- 
ward, tumultuous soil of human life, how hast thou 
wrestled for existence with this bounteous yet reluctant 
ground, how hast thou sent thy roots into the pierced 
heart of man's affections ! Through what dark stormy 
nights hast thou struggled with the winds, and grown 
strong in wrestling! How hast thou drawn up into 
thyself what is eternal and spiritual in man and made 
ib claim its kinship to divinity! Oh, wondrous tree! 
oh, Christian faith! oh, Christian Church! so small, 
so strong ! what would the world be without thee ? 
What wouldst thou be without the world ? Grow on 
till in thy life the perfect union of the earth and 
heaven, of God and man, shall be complete! 

Every Christian is a little Christendom; and the 



The Planter and the Rain. 



279 



method of the entrance of the Gospel into the great 
world is repeated in the way in which the Gospel enters 
into every soul, which then it occupies and changes. 
Again there is the special act of the implanting of the 
new life, and then there is the intrusting of the new- 
implanted life to the nature and its circumstances. Do 
you remember, oh, my Christian friend ! Perhaps the 
place has perished from the earth ; perhaps the fire has 
swept the stately church away in which the Lord first 
came and spoke the word which woke you from your 
lethargy; perhaps there is a well-remembered chamber 
in some house here in the city where strangers have long 
lived, whose threshold you have not crossed nor had 
the right to cross for years, but into which your memory 
at any instant may go back and see, almost visible, the 
figure of the Saviour who stood there on one unforgotten 
night and said to you, " You are mine ; " perhaps it is 
a silent wilderness ; perhaps it is the corner of a crowded 
street which you can never pass without the old myste- 
rious wonder growing into reality again. There Christ 
came to you ! There the descent from heaven silently 
took place, and the seed was in the soul ; then was a 
new miracle of grace. The man was born again ! 

Since then long years have come and gone. What 
have they seen ? The rain has nourished it, — that long- 
sown seed ! Nothing has happened since which has not 
touched that seed and helped or hindered its maturity. 
Your child's death twenty years ago, your failure, your 
success in business, the fame you won by some brilliant 
action, the book you wrote, the cause you argued, the 
long journey which you made, the friend you won or lost ; 



280 



The Planter and the Rain. 



and things more silent, more subtle, less evident and 
notable : your growing older, your changing thought of 
life, the philosophical idea which took you captive ; and, 
deeper still, the slow and steady operation of your es- 
sential nature, of the man that you intrinsically were, 
the being of your being, — all of these have held the 
new life in their grasp. They all have poured in upon 
it their vitality. They have made it a different thing 
from any other Christian life in all the Church. They 
have nourished it ; they have colored and shaped it ; and 
to-day you are the Christian which these two together 

— the historical conversion and the continuous experi- 
ence — have created. What shall we say that God has 
done for you ? Shall not our parable still tell the story ? 
" He has planted an ash, and the rain has nourished it. " 

Still, remember, it is His rain. The influences into 
whose influence the seed was given still were God's. He 
took the child, and gave the friend, and sent you on the 
journey, and shaped the nature which bestowed on the 
Christian life its distinctive character. It is not a dis- 
crimination between what God does and what you do. 
God forbid ! It is not that ! God is behind and in it 
all ; but it is the perception of two parts of His working, 

— one in which He comes directly from the heavens ; the 
other in which, through your essential sonship to Him- 
self, He ripens the seed which He implanted to its full 
result. It is all He. He is all and in all. 

How beautiful it is ! Oh, Christian, lose not either 
portion of the perfect whole, — not the divine historic 
access of the deeper life, not the subjection of the total 
nature, the total experience, to the perfection of that 



The Planter and the Bain. 



281 



divine access by assured possession. Stand forth, oh, 
human souls, and let the light which lighteth every 
man enter into you all. It seems to enter into all 
alike. But then, with the new light within you all, go 
forth, each with his several nature to his several life ; 
and, oh, the myriad glories of the various church, the 
rainbow splendor of the heaven which slowly builds it- 
self, as in each one life appropriates grace and grace 
transfigures life, and God becomes yours, and you be- 
come God's in the experience of which eternity shall 
see no end! 

These have been more or less clear illustrations and 
applications of our principle. May we not say that the 
principle itself includes the whole truth of the super- 
natural and its relation to the natural ? Let me give 
what time is left to that. What is the picture which 
the verse of Isaiah sets before our eyes ? A group of 
ash-trees are growing on the hill. We see them stand 
strong and substantial in the ground. Their roots are 
drinking in the juices of the earth; their branches 
catch the winds; the rain descends for their refresh- 
ment. We come back to them year after year, and lo ! 
each year they are a little larger than they were the 
year before. They live and grow, and all their life and 
growth appears to be the simple outcome of their terres- 
trial conditions. If we let our questioning run back no 
farther than the years which we and our fathers can re- 
member, these ash -trees are the creatures of the earth, 
set fast into its bosom, and with its life abundantly 
accounting for their lives. 

But by and by there comes a man whose questions 



282 



The Planter and the Bain. 



will not be content within that limitation. He hears 
of a time when there were no ash-trees here. He asks 
behind the method of their growth the method of their 
origin ; and then he learns how one day, long ago, there 
came a man bringing these ash-trees with him, and 
planted them, and said to the earth and to the elements, 
"Here, I give these to you. Take them and nourish 
them for me. " And then, when he has discovered that, 
the story of the ash-trees is complete. Behind the law 
of their growth has been set the fact of their planting. 
Behind the process there is a beginning. Behind the 
natural forces of their nourishment there is the super- 
natural will of him who chose that they should be. 

And now, let it be not a group of ash-trees but a group 
of men, — a world-full of men. They too stand rooted 
in the earth. Soil, winds, and rain, the things of 
earth, its nourishments and inspirations, are their 
food and drink. They are what you are, men and 
women who are listening to me now. The earth is 
theirs, and they are its. Agnosticism says that that is 
all which it is possible to know about them. Whence 
they came, what hand planted them here, it is folly to 
try to tell. The natural is everything. " The rain doth 
nourish them. " Religion says, " They must have come 
from somewhere, and calls the Somewhere which they 
came from God. The lives which the rain nourishes 
He planted. There is a supernatural. I feel the freer 
beating of a will." 

If we are not agnostics but religious men taught by 
the voice of God which speaks to us in our souls, then 
this is the view which we hold about these lives of ours, 



The Planter and the Bain. 283 



my brethren. I will not try, here at a sermon's end, to 
prove that that view is true. I will only ask you to see 
how great it is, and beg you to be true to it if you hold 
it ; for the place in which it sets your life, the thing it 
makes out of your life, is very noble and inspiring. 
A thought of God intrusted to the world — which, re- 
member, is itself full of God — for its embodiment and 
execution, — that is what your life is if the religious 
conception of life is true. Tell me, does the definition 
as you get hold of it meet and correspond with no 
double consciousness about yourself within yourself 
which has puzzled you a thousand times ? A thought 
of God intrusted to the earth for its embodiment and 
execution ! What are these dreams and visions, these 
upward reachings, these certainties of infinite belong- 
ings, these remonstrances with earth as if it were a ty- 
rant holding us in slavery ? What are they, oh, thought 
of God, but the unbroken tension of the chain which 
binds the thinker to his thought forever ? And what 
are all these earthlinesses, these tender clingings to the 
things our senses understand, these practical devices, 
these comfortable limitations, these perceived adap- 
tivenesses, these dreads of the vast universe, these 
calls of present duties, this fear of dying, this love of 
the present, warm, domestic earth, — what are they all 
but the pressure of the school -room on the scholar, of 
the warm ground upon the seed intrusted to it ? The 
man who does not somehow hold the complete truth 
about his life — both of these truths combined in one 
■ — does not live worthily. The man who has and holds 
them both, look, what a life he lives ! Look how sub- 



284 



The Planter and the Rain. 



stantially his roots are fastened in the earth. Look 
how aspiringly he lifts his branches to the sky. 

It is not strange that in the greatest of all human 
lives, — the life of lives, the life of Jesus, — all this com- 
plete truth about the life of man should be most mani- 
fest. A thought of God intrusted to the earth for its 
embodiment and execution ! Hear what He says about 
Himself : " I came forth from the Father and am come 
into the world. " Again, " I leave the world and go unto 
the Father. " " I came forth from the Father ! " All the 
mystery of Nazareth is in those words. All that made 
that birth to differ from the births of other men as be- 
ing more immediately the utterance of a thought of God 
is in these words, "I came forth from the Father." 
And "I am come into the world." All the distinct 
work of the thirty-three years, all the development of 
consciousness by propitious or unpropitious circum- 
stances, all the perfecting by suffering, and finally the 
cross and its consequences are in those words, " I came 
into the world. " A thought of God's intrusted for its 
embodiment and execution to the earth ; " The word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us, " — that is the Incarna- 
tion. And it is in the light of the Incarnation that every 
man must understand his own life and his brethren's. 

His own life and his brethren's, I say ; for I am anx- 
ious to have you feel that only when we see the super- 
natural and natural meeting in our brother's life can 
we be fair to him, or kind to him, or honor him as a 
fellow-creature ought to be honored, or help him as a 
fellow-creature ought to be helped. Here are you, set 
between your brethren who are more fortunate and your 



The Planter and the Bain. 



285 



brethren who are less fortunate than you are. On one 
side of you is the rich and popular man, who can do you 
a favor. On the other side of you is the poor, obscure 
man, who wants your favor shown to him. To the one 
you are tempted to be obsequious, to the other you are 
tempted to be brutal. Here are you tempted to yield to 
public opinion on one side, and tempted to despise brave 
and noble earnestness on the other. Tell me, will it not 
set you right with both, will it not enable you to keep 
your respect for yourself before the one man and your 
respect for him before the other man if you say of each 
of them as you look him in the face, " This is a thought 
of God intrusted to the earth for its embodiment and 
execution " ? Two thoughts about each brother-man must 
swallow up everything beside when you say that to 
yourself about any fellow-creature, — the thought of 
the sacredness of his life, and the desire to make the 
earth to which God has intrusted him as fall of helpful- 
ness, as free from hindrance for him as you can. Oh, 
fathers and mothers, say it of the children in your 
arms ! Oh, students, say it of the men who are your 
fellow-students ! Oh, friends, say it of the friends you 
love ! Oh, enemies, say it of the enemies you dare to 
hate ! Oh, helpers, say it of the poor you help ! Oh, 
suppliants, say it of the rich who help you ! Oh, men 
and women, say it of each other, everywhere ! " This is 
a thought of God intrusted to the earth for its embodi- 
ment and execution. " And so peace and responsibility 
and elevation shall take possession of all human inter- 
course, and the children live together like their Father's 
children in their Father's house. 



286 



The Planter and the Bain. 



Behold, then, here is the issue of it all ! We live to- 
gether between the solemn heaven and the solemn earth. 
The hand which planted us and the soil in which we 
are planted — both of them are real, neither of them 
can be forgotten. God help us to be true to both. God 
help us to stand in the world with natures opened up- 
ward to receive the divinest gifts, with natures opened 
outward to catch every humblest opportunity which life 
affords. What were we if we had not come from God ? 
What were we if we had not come into the world ? Oh, 
by the God we came from and by the world into which 
we have come, let us be men ! And to be men is to be 
images of Christ, the Tree of Life. It is to have the 
Psalmist's blessing, to be trees planted by the waterside 
which shall bring forth their fruit in due season. May 
that blessing come to all of us ! 



XVII. 



NEW EXPERIENCES. 
For ye have not passed this way heretofore. — Joshua iii. A, 

It was just before the entrance of the children of Is- 
rael into Canaan that these words were spoken to 
them. For three days their camp had been stretched 
along the low hills which skirt the Jordan, and on this 
fourth day the officers of Joshua went through their 
ranks to give them the last commands. They said, 
"When ye see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord 
your God, and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then 
shall ye remove from your place and go after it. Yet 
there shall be a space between you and it, about two 
thousand cubits by measure. Come not near unto it, 
that ye may know the way by which ye must go ; for 
ye have not passed this way heretofore. " And Joshua 
said unto the people, " Sanctify yourselves, for to-morrow 
the Lord will do wonders among you." As he spoke 
the Jews became solemn. Their long journey in the 
desert was over, and the mystery of an unknown country 
and an unknown life lay before them. They looked 
across to where " fair Canaan stood, and Jordan rolled 
between;" and all their pettier life was hushed, and 
they grew serious and thoughtful. 



288 



New Experiences. 



It was the impressiveness of a new experience. It 
was the departure from what was familiar, a long habit 
of life, and the near entrance upon something new. 
That always makes men serious when they realize it. 
A ship's company who have lived together for a few 
weeks, growing accustomed to their shipboard life, at 
last draw near the land toward which they have been 
sailing, and it is always striking to see how a quietness 
and seriousness seems to come over them in the last 
hours before they go on shore. New things are waiting 
for them there. They are going to exchange the fa- 
miliar for the unfamiliar ; so there is little of lightness 
and much seriousness. And this is the way in which 
life keeps its solemnity. It is always opening new and 
unexpected things to us. There is no monotony in 
living to him who walks even the quietest and tamest 
paths with open and perceptive eyes. The monotony 
of life, if life is monotonous to you, is in you, not in 
the world. It may be that you think all days alike, 
and grow weary with their sameness, and get none of the 
stimulus and solemnity which comes from constantly 
reaching unexpected places and experiences. If it is 
so, you are very much to be pitied. You cannot think 
what a different, what a more solemn and delightful, 
place this world is to a man who goes out every morn- 
ing into a new world, who is Adam over again every 
day, who starts each day with the certainty that he 
"has not passed that way heretof ore. " The horse in 
the treadmill does not live a life more different from 
the horse on the prairies than your life is from such a 
man's. And if we leave out of account the merely 



New Experiences. 



289 



superficial and unreliable difference of animal spirits, 
the fundamental difference of the two lives lies in the 
difference of their perception of God. It is God, and 
the discovery of Him in life, and the certainty that He 
has plans for our lives and is doing something with 
them, that gives us a true, deep sense of movement, 
and lets us always feel the power and delight of un- 
known coming things. Without Him a life must sink 
into weary monotony, or escape it only by artificial and 
superficial changes. 

Let us look to-day at this power of unprecedented 
things, and try to get some idea of the true way to ap- 
proach them. And if we think of this story of the J ews 
we get at the first principle of the matter immediately. 
What made the seriousness and impressiveness of their 
entrance into the promised land was the mixture of the 
new with the old which it brought. The land into • 
which they were to go was new. Never before had their 
feet trodden the western bank of Jordan. The very 
unseen bed of the stream itself was to be uncovered that 
they might pass through. But into this new land they ^ 
were to be led by the old familiar ark which had led 
them all the way from Sinai. A new land, new wars 
to fight, by and by new towns to dwell in, a new life to 
live, but into it all the old power was to guide them, 
in it all they were to live by the same old principles 
and under the same old care. It was this application 
of the old principles to the new life that gave the seri- 
ousness to their position. If there had been nothing of 
that sort, if they had been going to leave all behind 
them, and this new world were wholly another world, 

19 



290 



New Experiences, 



where nothing of their old experience should be availa- 
ble, where the ark could not lead them, where God 
could not keep them, there might have been fright and 
terror as they prepared to enter ; but there would not 
have been that bright, calm, thoughtful seriousness 
which burns in the words of Joshua, and seems to 
glow on the faces of the waiting Hebrews all through 
the verses of this significant and graphic chapter. 
They are asking themselves about God. They are won- 
dering what He has in reserve for them. They are 
gathering up all that they have known of Him. They 
are pondering how their thoughts of Him will be modi- 
fied and enlarged in the new experience. The past and 
the future, like the waves of two great oceans, are meet- 
ing in their minds as they stand waiting for the ark to 
move and the crossing of the Jordan to begin. 

And this is the power of every approach to what is 
unprecedented. It is that we cannot leave behind the 
old even when we go on into the new. It is that every 
passage into new and untried things brings out the es- 
sential principles under which we are living, unsnarls 
them from the multitude of accidental things with 
which they have been entwined, brings out their real 
character, develops them into their fuller force and 
clearness. Let us see how this is true in several ways. 

Apply it first of all to the changes which are coming 
all the time in the circumstances of our lives. These 
changes are either great or small. Their real great- 
ness or smallness depends upon the power which they 
possess over the principles by which we are living. No 
change in life is small which really brings into new 



New Experiences. 



291 



shapes the laws and principles which we are living by. 
The naturalist over his microscope watches with the in- 
tensest interest some just perceptible transformation in 
some obscure part of an animal system, because he sees 
that the laws of life of that system are working them- 
selves out there in new shapes to new results. Now 
when a change comes in the circumstances of our lives 
you will see, I think, if you consider it, that what 
makes it interesting is that you go into the new condi- 
tion the same man that you have been, and that some 
new development of your old character comes out in the 
newer life. If you go and stand in the midst of Lon- 
don, or climb to the top of the Pyramids, or set your- 
self in the middle of a snow-field of the Alps, it is a 
thrilling and delightful experience. What is it that 
makes it so ? It is that you carry your old self there. 
Some accidental parts of yourself you have left behind 
in Boston, but your essential self, with your habits and 
your ways of thinking, you have carried there ; and the 
wonder is to feel this identity of yours standing among 
these unfamiliar things, beaten by the waves of this 
strange city life, frowned on by the hoary ages, or 
lighted by the glory of the everlasting snows. You 
realize yourself there with a strange and sharp distinct- 
ness ; and then you feel this identity of yours, without 
ceasing to be itself, becoming larger for the new things 
about it, accomplishing its completest thought and life, 
prophesying for itself destinies, declaring for itself ca- 
pacities, as it did not do at home. These are the two 
pleasures of the traveller who has any disposition to- 
ward philosophy and self-inspection. The new places 



292 



New Experiences. 



where he goes first bring out his own familiar individ- 
uality into clearness, and then ripen it to some finer 
quality or larger size ; but this of course depends upon 
his carrying his old self there with him. If he did not 
do that, London and Egypt would be no more to him 
than they are to the Londoners and the Egyptians who 
have lived there always ; whereas they really are many 
things to us which they cannot be to them. 

And now let it be the going, not from Boston to Egypt, 
but from wealth to poverty, from poverty to wealth, 
from health to sickness, from sickness to health, from 
one business to another business, from one home to 
another home. The poetry and lesson of it all seems 
to me to lie in this, that the change of life takes its 
value from the continuity of life. The change of life 
first brings out the fact of what you are, and then pro- 
ceeds to work its changes in that fact. You have been 
apprehending God after one fashion, from one point of 
view, while you were a poor man; now, behold! wealth 
is opening before you. Bright paths unfold themselves 
all carpeted with flowers. You have not passed that 
way before. You are going to enter it next week when 
the fortune drops from the ripe tree into your lap. 
And when you have entered there, what will really be 
the significant and interesting fact to yourself and 
other people ? Not certainly that there is one less poor 
man in the world and one more rich man, — as if the 
poor man that is gone and the rich man that has come 
were wholly different beings who had no relation to 
each other, — but that this rich man was the poor man, 
that he has come into wealth with the experiences of 



New Experiences. 



293 



his poverty, that he is filling out the idea of God 
which he got when he was poor, by the new sight of 
God which he is having inside the walls of gold. Oh, 
my dear friends, when any of the changes of life draws 
near to you, whenever God is leading you into new cir- 
cumstances, clasp with new fervor and strength the old 
hand which you have long been holding, but prepare to * 
feel it send new meanings to you as it clasps your hand 
with a larger hold. And since you are always entering 
into some new life, whether it mark itself by notable 
outward change or not, always hold the hand of God in 
grateful memory of past guidance and eager readiness 
for new, — that is, in love and in faith. 

It is by this same principle that we are able to picture 
to ourselves the natural and healthy way by which men 
ought to pass from one period or age of life into another. 
The principle is, that the new and unprecedented is to 
be entered under the guidance of the old and famil- 
iar, the old and familiar being expected to show them- 
selves in altered and larger ways when they have brought 
us into the new. Evidently such a principle would 
redeem the fragmentariness of life, and make it one 
great, growing whole. For there come great breaks in 
men's spiritual history as men pass from one period of 
life to another. The worst and the most seemingly ir- 
reparable of them all is that one to which apparently 
people have made up their minds as if it were some- 
thing that could not be avoided. I mean the break be- 
tween the child's religion and the man's, — the violent 
break which comes in later boyhood and earlier youth, 
when, having ceased to obey mere authority and to believe 



294 New Experiences. 

what he is taught implicitly, the human creature has 
not yet attained the faith and life of reason and personal 
conviction. A young man's life is full of novelty. 
" You have not passed this way heretofore " seems 
written upon every fascinating new pathway down which 
he walks. His freedom is a novelty. His bold begin- 
# nings of individual reason are all new. Behind him, 
with a river rolling between, there lies that despised 
land in which he was a child, bound to obey what others 
commanded, and not knowing enough to doubt what 
others said was true. What shall we say about the 
progress which the boy seems to have made across the 
gap that lies between him and his childhood ? Shall we 
not certainly say this, that the progress is natural and 
healthy and good, that the gap is unnatural and bad ? 
It is right that he who has been a child in leading-strings 
should rejoice in the conscious power of walking alone. 
It is wrong that he should cast aside all the culture 
and strength which he gathered while he was being 
held and carried, and should insist on counting those 
years all thrown away. The boy, aware that the years 
are close upon him when he must act for himself and 
hold his belief upon his own conviction, is foolish if he 
does not accept the responsibility, and seek to understand 
the world and the faith with which he has to deal ; but 
he is no less foolish if in the desire for manliness and 
originality, he throws away all that has been taught 
him as a child, and grows contemptuous about it. The 
true birth of manliness, the true originality of the boy 
coming to be a man, is seen in him who, taking the 
faith and discipline of his childhood, makes it his own, 



New Experiences. 



295 



applies it to his own life, finds its peculiar adjustments 
to his own character. I think there is no better condi- 
tion of the human nature to contemplate than that of a 
young man dealing truly and seriously with the faith 
of his fathers which has been implicitly his child- 
hood's faith. He finds new questions rising which he 
never dreamed of. He sees new tasks unfolding most 
perplexingly. The belief in God and Christ which has 
been vague to him begins to grow clear as his new needs 
call out new reality from it. As his faith becomes 
clearer, no doubt it changes in this part or that. The 
faith which is shaping for his manhood evidently is not 
to be wholly the same as that in which he was trained. 
He is to see more of God, he is to see God differently ; 
but the essential thing is this, that it is to be the same 
God whom he has been seeing, that he is still to see. 
There is to be no dreadful gap in which, with crude 
impiety, he rebels against God altogether. It is to be an 
enlargement of faith as he makes it his own, not a 
flinging away of faith with a mere possibility of finding 
it again some day. 

This is the meaning of a boy's, or a young man's, con- 
firmation. That is the time in life when confirmation 
ought to come. Not in mere childhood, when the life 
is still wholly under other people's influence ; not, un- 
less it has been put off by neglect before, in those later 
years when manhood is an old story, and the nature 
is hard with long doubt and hesitation ; but it ought to 
come just when the new freedom is beginning to be felt, 
when obedience to authority is opening into personal re- 
sponsibility, when the implicit faith is just asking for 



296 



New Experiences. 



its soul of reason, and anticipating the changes which 
shall make it the peculiar faith of this peculiar life, — 
then it is that confirmation has its fullest meaning. 
It is the gathering up of all the faith and dutiful im- 
pulse of the past that it may go before the life into the 
untried fields. All later times for it — though it is 
good indeed to seize them if the true time has been al- 
lowed to slip by — all later times for confirmation are 
as if the Jews had forgotten the ark when they crossed 
the Jordan and had to send back for it when they were 
fighting their hard battles before Jerusalem or Ai. But 
the boy's confirmation is like the host refusing to cross 
the river, beyond which lay the untrodden land, unless 
they saw the ark going through the water first, so that 
they could follow it. 

All this applies indeed to every change from period to 
period of life. The poetry of all growing life consists 
in carrying an oldness into a newness, a past into a 
future, always. So only can our days possibly be bound 
" each to each by natural piety. " I would not for the 
world think that twenty years hence I should have 
ceased to see the things which I see now, and love them 
still. It would make life wearisome beyond expres- 
sion if I thought that twenty years hence I should see 
them just as I see them now, and love them with nc 
deeper love because of other visions of their lovable- 
ness. And so there comes this deep and simple rule for 
any man as he crosses the line dividing one period of 
his life from another, the same rule which he may use 
also as he passes through any critical occurrence of his 
life: Make it a time in which you shall realize your 



New Experiences. 



297 



faith, and also in which you shall expect of your faith 
new and greater things. Take what you believe and 
are and hold it in your hand with new firmness as you 
go forward ; but as you go, holding it, look on it with 
continual and confident expectation to see it open into 
something greater and truer. 

No doubt there is something which every critical 
change in the circumstances of life, or a change from 
one period of life to another, gives us the chance to 
cast away and leave behind. No doubt the Israelites 
left in heaps the accumulated rubbish of their desert / 
journey, — their worn-out clothing and their ragged 
shoes, — on the eastern bank of Jordan ; but they took 
the ark with them. So let every call that comes to us 
to enter into new and untried ways be to us the summons . 
to leave our worthless way and foolish sins behind us, 
but to tighten our hold on truth and goodness, to re- * 
new the covenant of our souls with God before we go on 
where He shall lead us. 

I think, again, that the picture of the relation between 
the old and the new which is seen in our story throws 
light upon the true method and spirit of all change in 
religious opinions. The change of one religious opinion 
for another is, if we think of it, a profoundly serious 
thing. It is an alteration in our thought of God ; and 
if our thoughts of God are real thoughts, they decide 
what we are. And so a change in our thought of God 
must be a change in us. " As he thinketh in his heart, 
so is he, " said Solomon. And a different way of think- 
ing in our hearts ought to make us different men. But 
there is little of this feeling of seriousness very often 



298 



New Experiences. 



in the way in which people say that they change their 
faith. A light and careless toss from creed to creed 
seems often to be all that one can see. " I used to be a 
Unitarian, but now I am a Trinitarian. " "I used to 
think so and so about eternal punishment, but now I 
have changed my views and think so and so instead. " 
You know how frivolously in the gaps of other talk peo- 
ple say things like these. And there is no community 
where such words are heard more plentifully than in 
this community where we live. It is not good. I think 
that the most stationary bigot, who is what he is for no 
other reason in the world except that he has been it for 
so long, is better than this vagrant among the creeds. 

But yet there must come changes of religious faith. 
Men and women do go on, led by God, step by step, 
until they come where what has seemed to them to be 
true, seems to them to be true no longer, and some- 
thing which they once disbelieved has opened to them 
its soul of truth. Another spiritual prospect opens to 
them which they never saw before. God is different ; 
the Bible is very different ; Christ is profoundly differ- 
ent ; and their own natures reveal to them sights which 
are all strange and unexpected. These are not the 
people who parade their change of faith. These are 
not they who, having been noisy partisans of one creed, 
are heard in a few days among the noisiest of shouters 
for another. They are people with whom the change 
has come in silence. In their quiet rooms, in calm 
and prayerful thought, taking deep hold of them so 
that they are wholly ready to accept the consequences 
of their faith and be something different because of the 



New Experiences. 



299 



new belief they hold, in silence that is full of fear and 
hope, slowly and patiently, so their new view of truth 
has come to them. But it has come. No longer is 
there any doubt about its imminence. They stand upon 
the brink of the thin line that separates them from it. 
No longer can the full entrance into it be delayed. 

There is no sense of newness and inexperience in the 
world like that. No change of outward circumstances 
can for a moment match it. " You have not passed this 
way before " seems to be rung into the soul's ears out 
of every new application of the new-learnt truth to 
everything. And then, just then, when all seems new, 
and we are bewildered and exalted with the opening 
spiritual prospect, then is the time to call up the Ark * 
of God, which may have fallen in the rear, and to set it 
clearly in the front. Then, when you are going forth 
into regions of spiritual thought that are new to you, 
then you need to put all the honesty and purity and un- 
selfishness of your nature in the van of your life ; then 
you need to review and renew your old covenant with 
God; then you want to have all your earnestness, all 
your sense of the value of truth, refreshed in you. Be- 
lieve me, my dear friends, this is the only salvation of a 
man who is compelled to change his opinions of relig- 
ious truth, that in doing it he should become a more 
spiritual man. If he does not, the change will demoral- 
ize him. It is so in the world. A change of creed 
coming in a frivolous and unspiritual age shakes the 
whole fabric of religion; but a change of religious 
thought among men full of religious earnestness is 
quickening and reviving. Do not let yourself contem- 



300 



New Experiences. 



plate any new view of truth, though you be sure that it 
is truer than the old, unless you are sure that what 
leads you to it is a deep desire for holiness and a real 
love of truth, and a real love of God. Where they 
lead you, you may freely go, and the land shall be very 
rich under your feet. 

The principle which we have been studying seems to 
furnish again the law of all more distinctly spiritual 
life and progress. It furnishes the law of the conver- 
sion-time, for there the new and old unite ; we pass on 
into the new under the guidance and assurance of the 
old. What is it that comes in that day when a man 
begins the Christian life ? Across a resolution which 
may be hard or easy for him, he sets forth into a new 
way of living. How often I have tried to tell to you the 
story of that newness ! How many of you have known 
it well out of your own experience ! He who has been 
living alone begins to live with God. He who has 
been living for himself begins to live for other men. 
New motives are open within him ; new tasks are spread 
before him. Old things are passed away; all things 
are become new. And yet consider ! Is not a very large 
part of the impulse which propels the new life born of 
the late discovered knowledge of what the life has been 
before ? If you want to make a man a Christian, how 
shall you begin ? Will you tell him of Christ as if 
then for the first time he and Christ had anything to 
do with one another ? Will you emphasize the moment 
of the change so strongly that it shall seem as if, before 
that, as he had cared nothing for the Saviour, the Saviour 
also had cared nothing for him ? No ; you will tell him, 



New Experiences. 



301 



if you know your blessed work, of a power which has 
been in his life from the moment that his life be- 
gan. You will bid him open his ears and hear the 
voice of a Saviour who has been always pleading. You 
will call up, out of the past, signs of God's love which 
he has never seen, but which have been always there. 
You will set those signs of a love which has always been, 
at the head of the progress which is yet to be. You 
will say, " I beseech you therefore, brother, by the mer- 
cies of God that you present your body a living sacrifice 
to Him. " " By all the love which He has shown you 
when you were most ungrateful now give yourself to 
Him, and go forward in His service." 

Conversion would be something very different from 
what it is if this were not so. The old life would go 
for nothing. No motive, no teaching, would come out 
of it. It would be as if the stream of Jordan were the 
stream of Lethe, bringing forgetfulness of all the past, 
and sending out the souls of men upon the other side as 
if that were the first beginning of their history. But 
no, take the new Christian and ask him what it means ; 
and all the absorbing interest and hope of his story 
rests on this : " See what a life I have lived ! I have 
neglected Christ ; I have been selfish. I have done my 
will and not His ; I have not even thought about Him 
all the time ; and yet see, He has been loving me all 
these years. He never has forgotten me. He has been 
loving me and helping from the beginning. My eyes 
have just been opened. I have just found it out. Hence- 
forth that late-discovered love will be the power of my 
life. It will lead me forward into other ways than those 



302 



New Experiences. 



in which I have been walking." And so, as the host 
of the Israelites stopped by the Jordan's bank before 
they crossed, until the old ark of the desert had swept 
through their ranks and taken its true place at their 
head, the believer's new conviction and hope waits on 
the brink of the new life till the mercies of the past 
have swept on to the front, and stand ready to lead into 
the yet untrodden fields of God. 

Such be the new life when it comes to you, my friends ! 
From childhood God has loved you, God has kept you. 
When you are moved to give yourself to God, let there 
come out of all that love and keeping one large, strong, 
deep assurance of God's love. On that love cast your- 
self and beg forgiveness, and then go forward under its 
assurance, giving yourself always more and more com- 
pletely to a God who does not need to give Himself to 
you because He has been always yours. 

All this does not apply only to the one critical experi- 
ence of the spiritual life which we call conversion ; it is 
true of all spiritual progress. Never let your Christian 
life disown its past. Let every new and higher consecra- 
tion and enjoyment into which you enter be made real 
to you by bringing into it all that Christ has already 
trained within you of grace and knowledge. I do not 
like to hear a Christian say of some great enlightenment 
of his life, "I never knew what Christ was till then. 
All my Christian life before that was worthless, and 
goes for nothing. " There are Christians who are fond 
of saying such things. Their experiences are all spas- 
modic, full of jerks and starts. The probability is that 
God led you up to that enlightenment by all that went 



New Experiences. 



303 



before. You never could have apprehended that truth or 
seen that glory of which you make so much, if first He 
had not led you through the dark and quiet places which 
you now despise. To the soul which dares believe the 
vast and precious truth of God's personal love, all life 
becomes significant, and no past is so dreary that out of 
it there will not come up some ark of God to lead us to 
the richer things beyond. 

I pass to one more application of our principle on 
which I must not dwell at length. It concerns our 
thoughts about the new life which awaits the soul in 
heaven. We think of the strangeness of that life into 
which they pass who have done with all the old familiar 
things of earth. Once, only once, for every man it 
comes. No feet pass twice down that dim avenue 
which we call death ; so that for every one who passes 
there, all that he sees is strange and new. This is the 
wonder, the impressiveness of death, I think. The 
common road grows tame because the feet have trodden 
it a hundred times, and the eyes have grown familiar 
with its scenery until it has ceased to be noted any 
longer. I think that any road anywhere on the earth 
over which all men on earth passed once, and through 
which no man on earth might pass twice, would become 
solemn and awful to the thoughts of men. So it is of 
death and all that lies beyond. " We have not passed 
this way heretofore, " men are saying to themselves as 
they begin to feel their path slope downward to the 
grave. It is that consciousness which we see coming 
in their faces when they know that they must die. And 
beyond death lies the unknown world. " No man hath 



304 



New Experiences. 



seen God at any time, " said Jesus ; but there the power 
of the new life is to be that " we shall see Him as He 
is. " It is our privilege to dwell upon the untold, un- 
guessed glory of the world that is to come. It is a 
poor economy of spiritual motive which tries to make 
heaven real by taking out of it all thought of inexpressi- 
ble and new delight, and bringing it down to the tame 
repetition of the scenes and ways of earth. But no man 
listens to the talk or reads the books which are often 
popular, about heaven, without feeling that the glory 
and delight of which they speak are far too completely 
separated in kind from any which this world's experi- 
ence has taught us how to value. It ought not to be 
so. The highest, truest thought of heaven which man 
can have is of the full completion of those processes 
whose beginning he has witnessed here, their completion 
into degrees of perfectness as yet inconceivable, but still 
one in kind with what he is aware of now. 

Having this thought of heaven, all the deepest life of 
this world is leading the man toward it. When he 
goes in there at last, it will be his old life with God 
that leads him. It will be his long desire to see God 
which at last introduces him to the sight of God. It 
will be his long struggle with sin which finally prepares 
him for the world where he can never sin. Let this be 
the glory that gathers around your daily experiences, 
my Christian friends. Poor, weak, homely, common- 
place as they may be, they are preparing you for some- 
thing far greater and more perfect than themselves. Be 
true in them, learn them down to their depths and they 
shall open heaven to you some day. The powers and 



New Experiences. 



305 



affection which are training in your family, your busi- 
ness, and your church are to find their eternal occupa- 
tion along the streets of gold. " Well done, good and 
faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few 
things. I will make thee ruler over many things. En- 
ter thou into the glory of thy Lord. " And so the long 
life of heaven shall be bound to the short life of earth 
forever. 

It is good then for a man to come to a future which 
he does not know. It is good for you if God brings you 
to the borders of some promised land. Do not hesitate 
at any experience because of its novelty. Do not draw 
back from any way because you never have passed there 
before. The truth, the task, the joy, the suffering on 
whose border you are standing, oh, my friend, to-day, 
go into it without a fear; only, go into it with God, 
— the God who has been always with you. Let the 
past give up to you all the assurance of Him which 
it contains. Set that assurance of Him before you. 
Follow that, and the new life to which it leads you 
shall open its best richness to you; for he who most 
humbly owns what God has given him and taught him 
already is surest of the best and deepest blessings and 
teachings which God has yet to give. 



20 



XVIII. 



THE PERFECT EAITH. 
Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. — Job xiii. 16. 

These words have always seemed to be the expression 
of the profoundest faith. When David sings, "I will 
sing unto the Lord because He hath dealt bountifully 
with me, " it seems to be something which all men can 
understand. It is a gratitude and trust won by visible 
mercy. But when a soul is able to declare that even 
under the smiting, ay, even under the slaying, of God 
it is able still to trust in Him, every one feels that that 
soul has reached a very true and deep, sometimes it 
must seem a rare, faith in Him. 

And yet it is a degree of faith which we know that 
men must have attained before they can be in any com- 
plete or worthy way believers in God. Merely to trust 
Him when He is manifestly kind to them, is surely not 
enough. A man's own soul cannot be satisfied with 
that. A man questions himself whether that is faith at 
all; whether it is not merely sight. Everywhere and 
always any lofty conception of trust has been compelled 
not to stop short of this: such an entrance into the 
nature and character of the trusted person that even 
when he seemed to be unreasonable and disappointing 
and unkind the faithful soul could trust him still 



The Perfect Faith. 



307 



Always the man who really wanted to completely trust 
another man has been obliged to feel that his trust was 
not complete if it stopped short of that. 

They are words that might be said almost in despera- 
tion. The soul, compelled to realize that there was no 
other hope for it, that if this hope failed it every hope 
was gone, and feeling that it could not live without some 
hope, might say, " I must and will keep faith in God. 
No matter how He fails me I will cling to Him still ; 
for I must cling to something still, and there is nothing 
else to cling to, and so, though He slay me, yet will I 
trust Him. " This is the spirit of a familiar hymn which 
always seemed to me doubtful as the expression of a 
healthy or even of a possible experience. 

* ' 1 can but perish if I go. 
I am resolved to try ; 
For if I stay away, I know 
I shall forever die." 

It is a question whether a faith as desperate as that 
is faith at all, but certainly it is not the faith expressed 
by these words out of our English version of the Book 
of Job. " Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. " 
There is something far more cordial about these words. 
They are not desperate ; they anticipate possible disap- 
pointment and pain; but they discern a hope beyond 
them. Their hope lies in the character of God. What- 
ever His special treatment of the soul may be, the soul 
knows Him in His character. And for the explanation 
of His treatment, for the cordial acceptance of His 
treatment even when it cannot be explained, the soul 
falls back upon its certainty concerning His character. 



308 



The Perfect Faith. 



There is no desperation here. There is no mere cling- 
ing to God because the soul, looking all about, can find 
nothing else to cling to. All is positive. God is just 
what the soul needs, and to its certainty of what God 
is the soul turns in every distress and perplexity about 
what God does. Behind its perception of God's con- 
duct, as an illumination and as a retreat, always lies 
its knowledge of God's character. 

The relations of character and conduct to each other 
are always interesting. Let us look at them in general 
for a few moments. The first and simplest idea of their 
relation is that conduct is the mouth-piece of character. 
What a man is declares itself through what he does. 
I see a man steal, and I know he has a thievish heart. 
I see a soldier fling himself upon the spears of the 
enemy, and I know that he is brave and patriotic. We 
know how closely this relation between character and 
conduct binds the two together. Each is a poor weak 
thing without the other. Character without conduct is 
dumb and paralyzed. Its life is there but it is shut out 
from action, and all man's history bears witness that it 
is shut out from growth. Mere qualities which do not 
become conscious of themselves, and do not make them- 
selves effective by contact with the world of things, lie 
stagnant, and can hardly be called live qualities at all 
And on the other hand, conduct without character is 
thin and most unsatisfying. The pleasant deed which 
does not mean a kindly heart behind it, the dashing en- 
terprise which is mere physical excitement, the steadi- 
ness in work which is merely mechanical habit and 
routine, the search for learning which is only curiosity, 



The Perfect Faith 



309 



— we all know how weary and unsatisfactory all of 
these become. No ; conduct is the trumpet at the lips 
of character. Character without conduct is like the lips 
without the trumpet, whose whispers die upon them- 
selves and do not stir the world. Conduct without 
character is like the trumpet hung up in the wind 
which whistles through it, and means nothing. The 
world has a right to demand that all which claims to 
be character should utter itself through conduct which 
can be seen and heard. The world has a right to dis- 
allow all claims of character which do not utter them- 
selves in conduct. " It may be real, — it may be good, " 
the world has a right to say, " but I cannot know it or 
test it ; and I am sure that however good and real it is, 
it is deprived of the condition of the best life and 
growth which is activity." 

This is the first relation between character and con- 
duct. Conduct utters and declares character; but we 
very soon find that this is not their only relation. It 
is through conduct that I know first what character is. 
I cannot enter into the knowledge of character in any 
other way ; but when I have once entered into a knowl- 
edge of character through my perception of conduct, 
then something else occurs which it is very interesting 
and often very beautiful to watch. By and by I come 
to know character, to which conduct has first intro- 
duced me, by itself ; and in its turn it becomes the in- 
terpreter of other conduct, so that I, who first knew 
what a man was by what he did, come afterward to un- 
derstand the things he does by the knowledge of what 
he is to which I have attained 



310 



The Perfect Faith. 



Does this seem obscure ? But it is what each of you 
is doing every day. Your life touches another man's 
life in some of the many varied contacts of the world, 
— you live beside him, you do business in the same 
street and watch how he behaves, you see that he does 
honest deeds, that he resists temptations to dishonesty ; 
by and by when your convictions about his conduct 
have become very clear, after you have watched him for 
a long time, you go behind his conduct to his character. 
You say not merely, " He does honest things ; " you say, 
" The man is honest. " You not merely know his acts, 
you know him. That is a different kind of knowledge. 
He is more than the aggregate of his acts. He is a na- 
ture. To know a nature is an exercise of your faculties 
different from what it would be to know facts. It in- 
volves deeper powers in you, and is a completer action 
of your life. It is thus that, going on through his hon- 
est conduct to his character, you have come to know 
your friend's honest self. And now suppose he does 
some act which puzzles you. The world shakes its 
head at him and calls his act dishonest. You yourself 
do not see the clew by which to understand it. But 
suppose you are so sure that he is honest that not even 
the strange and puzzling circumstances of this act can 
shake you. You say, " I know that he is honest and so 
this cannot be a cheat. " Such a degree of confidence 
is possible; in many cases it is perfectly legitimate. 
Each of you has that degree of confidence in some one of 
your fellow-men. When such a confidence in character 
exists, do you not see what a circuit you have made ? 
You began with tL? observation of conduct which you 



The Perfect Faith. 



311 



could understand ; through that, you entered into knowl- 
edge of personal character; from knowledge of charac- 
ter you came back to conduct, and accepted actions which 
you could not understand. You have made this loop, 
and at the turn of the loop stands character. It is 
through character that you have passed from the obser- 
vation of conduct which is perfectly intelligible into 
the acceptance of conduct which you cannot understand, 
but of which you know only who and what the man was 
that did it. 

All this is quite familiar. And we can see how ne- 
cessary some such progress of relation to our fellow- 
men must be. We can see how limited our life would 
be if we could never pass through study of their actions 
into confidence in the characters of the men with whom 
we have to do. Every man would always be on trial. 
We should always be testing even our dearest friends. 
Indeed, there could be no such thing as dear friendship ; 
for friendship implies communion with and confidence 
in character. We should look at the last act of our 
companion with whom we had kept company for scores 
of years with the same suspicious and watchful scrutiny 
with which we examine the first things which a new ac- 
quaintance does. Any one can see how sterile this would 
make our whole association with our fellow-men. The 
best that is in any man is locked away until you trust 
him. When the first scrutiny is over ; when you have 
satisfied yourself that the man whom you are dealing 
with thinks wisely and means generously ; when, having 
first made his actions a key to his character, you have 
come to make his character a key to his actions, — then 



312 



The Perfect Faith. 



you begin to get the real benefit of whatever richness 
and helpfulness of nature there may be in him. 

The same is true about every one of the higher asso- 
ciations of mankind. It is true about the association of 
man with Nature. Man watches Nature at first sus- 
piciously, sees what she does, is ready for any sudden 
freak or whim or mood; but by and by he comes to 
know of Nature's uniformity. He understands that she 
is self-consistent. He sees what she means by all her 
actions. He is able to state what he calls her laws. 
That is really an entrance into the character of Nature. 
Man has come to know not merely what Nature does, 
but also in some degree what Nature is. And after that, 
when he interprets every new phenomenon by the es- 
tablished laws, he is only doing by Nature what we have 
already seen him doing by his fellow-man. He has 
passed around the loop. Beginning with observed and 
criticised conduct, he has passed, through sympathy 
with character, into an acceptance of conduct otherwise 
wholly mysterious to him. 

Or think about a man's relation to any institution to 
which at last he gives the direction of his life. A man 
observes the actions of a church, and they so win his 
confidence that he comes to believe in the church's char- 
acter as a depositary of divine wisdom and of the spirit 
of God. When he has once come to that, the church 
may offer him most unreasonable dogmas and bid him 
do most unspiritual things and he will not rebel against 
the utterances of that voice which is to him the very 
voice of God. Everywhere this circuit marks the 
course by which man is brought to unquestioning 



The Perfect Faith. 



313 



submission. He starts with the watching of conduct. 
He goes on into the perception of character, and on the 
warrant of apprehended character he accepts conduct 
which in itself bewilders and perplexes him. 

And now we want to carry all this over to our thought 
of God, and see how it supplies the key to that great 
utterance of faith which is in our text, — " Though He 
slay me, yet will I trust Him." It is from God's 
treatment of any man that that man learns God. What 
God does to him, that is what first of all he knows of 
God. "His creation, preservation, and all the bless- 
ings of this life, " the tendency, the evident tendency of 
God's conduct toward him to make him good and happy, 
— that is the first revelation which he meets. That 
revelation we can imagine as stopping short with itself, 
and becoming the whole religion of a man. The man 
might say, "Yes, I see, the sun is bright. I feel the 
air is soft and gentle. I recognize that the whole world 
is tempting me to honesty and industry and purity. 
God is feeding me, body and soul, and I take His food 
and thank Him for it. " That might be all. The man 
might get no farther than just that bare acceptance of 
treatments of God, each one of which, separately taken 
up and criticised, challenged his approval and made him 
see that it was good. And evidently, if that were all, 
if the man had really not gone beyond that, there would 
be no ground on which the man should, nay none on 
which he could, accept any treatment of God which ap- 
peared to him harsh or unwise. If the air roughened 
or the sun grew dim, or if the world tempted him to 
evil instead of enticing him to good, he, holding God 



314 



The Perfect Faith. 



always on trial, judging God anew by each new treat- 
ment he received, must of necessity be thrown off from 
God by each new disappointment. He could not help 
it. The moment God's conduct went against his judg- 
ment, he must disown God. 

But suppose the other case. Suppose that the man, 
behind and through the treatment that God has given 
him, has seen the character of God. God has been just 
to him. He has not rested merely in the instances of 
God's justice, but has risen to the conception that God 
is just. God has been loving to him. He does not 
merely recount God's loving acts, but he sees God, 
and says, " Yes, God is love. " He goes up along the 
conduct to the character. He goes up along the sun- 
light to the sun. His nature, made to know God's na- 
ture, does know Him with immediate apprehension. 
The acts of God toward him are, as it were, the ushers 
which open the door and lead us into His presence. 
When we are once there the ushers may retire. We 
may forget the special acts of love or justice which first 
showed us what He was, and live in the direct percep- 
tion of His character. If that is possible, then evi- 
dently we are ready to see each new act which God does 
toward us with all the illumination of His realized char- 
acter upon it. Let us be certain that He did it, and we 
know that it must be just and kind because He is love 
and justice. Let me know that the water flows directly 
from the fountain, and it must be pure because the foun- 
tain, I know, is purity itself. The taste of corruption 
which seems to be in the water must really be in me who 
taste it. God being good cannot do evil. I, standing 



The Perfect Faith. 



315 



where all my experience has brought me, clear in His 
presence, know that He is good. Therefore, however 
cruel His deeds may seem, they cannot shake my cer- 
tainty that He is kind; however unreasonable His 
deeds may seem, they cannot shake my certainty that 
He is wise. Therefore, in the tumult and distress of 
what seems to be the ruin of my life, I can still stand 
calm and say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust 
Him." 

This, then, is our doctrine of man's relation to the 
conduct and the character of God. Through God's con- 
duct man knows God's character, and then through 
God's character God's conduct is interpreted. Such a 
doctrine neither sets man in the miserable and false 
position of forever judging God by his own poor stand- 
ards, nor, on the other hand, does it call on man to 
bow in blindness and accept as good the will of a God 
of whom he knows nothing because that God has borne 
no witness of Himself. These are the two dangers of 
all man's search after God, — one, that man will keep 
his idea of God forever on test and trial, and never cor- 
dially accept Him and enlarge his own life by trusting 
faith in the life that is greater than his ; the other, that 
man will make a God of his own imagining, and never 
verify his thought of Him by any reference to the facts 
of human life. Against both of these dangers the doc- 
trine of man's trust in God which I have tried to state 
attempts to guard. Man knows God's character by 
God's conduct, and then interprets God's conduct by 
God's character. And if to each individual's observa^ 
tion of God's ways you add the observation of the race 



316 



The Perfect Faith. 



in all its generations, which the man who is in true 
sympathy with humanity may use in large degree as if it 
were his own, it does appear as if you had a doctrine 
out of which must come at once intelligence and rever- 
ence, — the culture of the watchful eye and of the 
trustful heart together; the possibility both of David's 
reasoning, "I will praise Him because He has dealt 
lovingly with me," and of Job's faith, "Though He slay 
me, yet will I trust Him. " 

It is interesting to see (as we have already seen to 
some extent) how this method of faith prevails in all the 
relations of the human mind to the objects of its trust. 
There is a possible confidence of soul in soul, won by 
the experience of the trusted soul's trustiness, which 
has again and again enabled one human being to say of 
another, " Though he slay me, I will trust him still. " 
Think of the old story in the Book of Genesis. See 
Abraham and Isaac — the father and the son — travel- 
ling together from the land of the Philistines to the 
mountain of Moriah, which God had showed to him. 
Behold the preparations for the sacrifice ; hear the boy's 
artless and pathetic question, "Father, behold the fire 
and the wood ! where is the lamb ? " Then see how 
gradually the boy comes first to suspect and then to 
know that it is for him that all this preparation has 
been made. He is to be the victim. There is no word 
even of remonstrance. Isaac has learned long back to 
trust his father as one who knew the will of God ; and 
so when now Abraham looks him in the face and says 
to him, " God wills this, my son, " the child's confi- 
dence bears the strain and does not falter. " Though 



The Perfect Faith. 



317 



he slay me, yet will I trust him," we can almost hear 
the boy say as we see him submit to be bound and to be 
laid upon the wood. 

Turn for another instance to a later day in the same 
Jewish history. Remember how the " daughter of the 
warrior Gileadite " gave up her youth and hope and life 
in free acceptance of her father's will. Jephthah, her 
father, had vowed that he would offer to the Lord what- 
ever first came out to meet him when he returned victo- 
rious. We need not sympathize with the reckless folly 
of the vow in order to feel the beauty of the self-conse- 
cration with which his child accepted for herself its 
dreadful consequences. The poet has unfolded the sim- 
ple pathos of the Bible story and made us feel the honor 
for him who by all his loving care had deserved the 
trust with which the maiden sings from the land that 
lies beyond the pain of dying, — 

** My God, my laDd, ray father, these did move 
Me from my bliss of life that Nature gave, 
Lowered softly with a threefold cord of love 
Down to a silent grave. 

" It comforts me in this one thought to dwell, 
That I subdued me to my father's will, 
Because the kiss he gave me e'er I fell 
Sweetens the spirit still." 

There is a faith that not merely welcomes the fatal 
blow but remains even after the blow has done its work. 
Though He has slain me, yet do I trust Him. 

If we turn from sacred to classic story, the same thing 
is there too, and we see how everywhere human nature 
loves the spectacle of such unquestioning faith. The 



318 



The Perfect Faith. 



Roman Virginius when his daughter is threatened with 
insult cries with a voice full of woe and love together, 
" There is no way but this, " and as he smites her, Vir- 
ginia falls without a word or look except of loving 
trust. Or, again, we may recall the most pathetic of all 
the ancient tragedies, in which the gentle daughter of 
the Grecian leader gives her life to make possible the 
success of her father's army on its way to Troy. At 
first there is terrible remonstrance and clinging to this 
sweet, earthly life ; Iphigenia cries, " The light of heaven 
is sweetest of things for men to behold, but that below 
is nought; and mad is he who seeks to die. To live 
dishonorably is better than to die gloriously." But 
soon her father's terrible conviction takes possession of 
her. Her faith in him which he has won in all the 
years of his fatherly kindness does not desert her now ; 
and at the last she is seen standing, — a figure of exalting 
light and triumph and beauty, by his side, waiting to 
be sacrificed. "Oh, father, I am here for thee, and I 
willingly give my body on behalf of my country and of 
the whole land of Greece, that leading it to the altar of 
the goddess they may sacrifice it, since this is ordained. 
. . . Thou hast nurtured me for a glory to Greece, and 
I will not refuse to die. " 

So everywhere the beings who most strongly and 
justly lay claim to our confidence pass by and by be- 
yond the testing of their actions, and commend them- 
selves to us and command our faith in them by what we 
know they are. It would be strange and very dreadful 
if this were not true of God, if to the end of all our 
intercourse with Him we always had to try each treat- 



The Perfect Faith. 



319 



ment which He sent to us by that one act's evident 
reasonableness, justice, and kindness. That were to 
live in the most meagre relationship to Him with whom 
our whole soul's desire that our relationship should be 
most intimate and rich. That hateful watch on God to 
see whether He would not fail us after all, that suspi- 
cious guard over ourselves lest we should give Him too 
extravagantly more of our heart's trust than He had de- 
served or justified, would make religion odious. There 
never has been a religion really deserving of the name 
which has not gone beyond that and in some way, in 
some degree, trusted the Godhood which it dimly saw, 
because of what it dimly knew Him to be, even in all its 
inability to understand His actions. 

This has been true of all religions, but it is most true 
of Christianity. When Christ came, it was distinctly 
for this purpose, to make men know God, — God Him- 
self, God in, behind, His actions. This was the purpose 
of the Incarnation.' No longer on difficult and hazard- 
ous deductions from His treatment of them were men 
to depend alone for the understanding of God's nature. 
" The Light of the Knowledge of the glory of God in 
the face of Jesus Christ," says Paul; "He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father," says Jesus. Still 
helped, no doubt, by what they saw God do, but shown 
by Jesus what God was behind His doing, what the 
God was who did all that was done to them, — so they 
who received the truth of Christ were to attain to faith 
in the fatherliness of their Heavenly Father. 

In the few moments which remain, let us consider 
how such a faith must shape and influence our life. I 



320 



The Perfect Faith. 



have already spoken of it all along with reference to 
the way in which it must affect our thoughts of joy and 
sorrow. Have not your hearts, my friends, at least 
sometimes, caught sight of a possible faith in God by 
which you might believe in Him, believe on Him, trust 
Him, even although no tokens of His presence or His 
love came to you in the shape of special pleasures, or 
even of the ordinary joys of living, — even although 
there came to you from Him what men who simply saw 
His treatment of you, and knew nothing of your insight 
into His character, thought as they watched it must be 
a sure destruction of your faith ? To stand with the 
good things of life all stripped away, to stand beaten 
and buffeted by storms of disaster and disappointment, 
to stand with all our brethren saying, "Behold, how 
God hates him, " and yet to know assuredly in our own 
hearts that God loves us, to know it so assuredly, with 
the intercourse that lies between our heart and His, that 
we can freely let go the outward tokens of His love, as 
the most true and trusty friends do not need to take 
gifts from one another for assurance of their affection, 
— this surely is the perfection of a faithful life. It is 
the gathering up of all happinesses into one happiness 
which is so rich that it can live without them all, and 
yet regally receives them into itself as the ocean 
receives the rivers. 

But happiness is not the only one, nor the richest 
one, of the gifts of God. There are two other gifts 
which every true man values vastly more than happi- 
ness. They are light and work. It would be sad in- 
deed if our principle did not apply to them; but it 



The Perfect Faith. 



321 



does ! To stand in the darkness and yet know that 
God is light ; to want to know the truth about a thou- 
sand mysteries, the answer to a thousand problems, and 
not to find the truth, the answers, anywhere, and yet to 
know beyond a peradventure that God is not hiding from 
us anything which it is possible and useful for us to 
know ; to stand in the darkness and yet know that God 
is light, — that is a great and noble faith, a faith to 
which no man can come who does not know God. If I 
know Him, know how He, by the very necessity of be- 
ing what He is, must value character in us more than 
acquirement, then I can understand how He can permit 
knowledge to be hidden from us till the time when its 
acquirement will bring the richest help to character; 
and, knowing that, I can live unrebelliously in dark- 
ness though I am always seeking after light, and 
though I am certain all the time that God is light and 
desires light for all His creatures. 

And so too about work. To want to do some useful 
labor in the world, to think that useless life is only 
premature death, to find ourselves apparently shut out 
from usefulness, and yet to believe that God wants us 
to grow into His likeness by whom all the work of the 
great working universe proceeds, — that is indeed a 
puzzle to one's faith. It may be that God used to give 
you plentiful chance of work for Him. Your days went 
singing by, each winged with some enthusiastic duty 
for the Master whom you loved. Then it was easy to 
believe that He was training you; His contact with 
your life was manifest ; the use He made of you was 
very clear. By and by came a change. He took all 

21 



322 



The Perfect Faith. 



that away. He snatched your work out of your hands, 
or made your hands so weak with sickness that they let 
it drop themselves. What then ? Have you been able 
still, in idleness, in what seems uselessness, to keep 
the assurance of His care for you ? Have you been able 
still to be satisfied with knowing just that here you 
were, ready to be used if He wanted to use you, ready 
also to be laid aside if He thought best ? That has de- 
pended upon whether all your old work with Him really 
brought you to know Him. If it did, if in it all, while 
you delighted in doing it, the principal blessing of it 
all was that it permitted you to look into God's soul 
and see how self-complete and perfect and supreme He 
was; how, after all His workings, it was not in His 
works but in His nature, not in His doing but in His 
being, that God's true glory lay ; if as you worked with 
Him, you really looked into His nature and discerned 
all this, — then when He takes your work away and bids 
you no longer to do good and obedient things but only 
to be good and obedient, surely that is not the death of 
faith. That may be faith's transfiguration. You can 
be idle for Him, if so He wills, with the same joy with 
which you once labored for Him. The sick-bed or the 
prison is as welcome as the harvest-field or the battle- 
field, when once your soul has come to value as the end 
of life the privilege of seeking and of finding Him. 

So out of all our thought this afternoon there comes 
one prayer which sums up everything: 0 Lord, by all 
Thy dealings with us, whether of joy or pain, of light or 
darkness, let us be brought to Thee. Let us value no 



The Perfect Faith. 



823 



treatment of Thy grace simply because it makes us 
happy or because it makes us sad, because it gives us 
or denies us what we want ; but may all that Thou send- 
est us bring us to Thee, that knowing Thy perfectness 
we may be sure in every disappointment that Thou art 
still loving us, and in every darkness that Thou art still 
enlightening us, and in every enforced idleness that 
Thou art still using us ; yea, in every death that Thou 
art giving us life, as in His death Thou didst give life 
to Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen ! 



XIX. 



THE JOY WITH GOD. 

Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. 
Luke xv. 16. 

The law that " a man is known by the company he 
keeps " works upward as well as downward. We are 
too apt to give it mostly a downward operation. If a 
man seeks the society of ruffians and thieves, we are 
ready enough to think that he himself is coarse and dis- 
honest; but if a man tries to live in the company of 
good and reputable people, we are not so ready to be- 
lieve that he too is pure and trustworthy. We wonder 
whether it is not for the purpose of making himself 
seem respectable and shielding himself under the shadow 
of their goodness ; we wonder whether he may not be an 
impostor or a toady. It is part of our suspicious and 
despondent disposition to attribute a strength to wicked- 
ness which we will not allow to goodness; but really 
goodness is the stronger power, and more natures in 
the world to-day are being made noble and pure by 
keeping company with nobleness and purity, than are 
being made base by the contagion of baseness. Think 
of the children with their fathers and their mothers, 
think of the unselfish and exalting friendships, think of 
the generous ambitions which every great good man 



The Joy ivith God. 



325 



inspires, and, disposed as you may be to think ill of 
human life, you must own that it is so. 

It is of this companionship with the good, with the 
best, that I am to preach to you to-day. The good shep- 
herd bringing home his sheep says, " Rejoice with me, 
for I have found it. " We think about the shepherd and 
about the sheep, but all the while, surrounding the fa- 
miliar parable, there is a dim and shadowy company of 
whom we do not often think. They are the shepherd's 
friends. He claims their friendly sympathy; and so 
they represent to us the people everywhere who are 
known to be good by their society with goodness, who 
are both shown to be noble and pure, and also are made 
to be nobler and purer by their power to rejoice with 
the noblest and purest natures in their success. 

To " rejoice with" a fellow-man implies a very inti- 
mate association with him. You may work with a 
man, sell goods at the same counter, or dig dirt in the 
same ditch, and that is mere companionship of habits. 
You may think with a man, have the same conception of 
what your work is, and how it ought to be done ; that is 
companionship of mind. But there comes a deeper kind 
of company when you come to share your fellow-worker's 
joy, when you are glad with an echo of his gladness and 
feel enthusiasm answering to his; then there is real 
companionship of nature. " Idem velle et idem nolle, " 
to love and hate alike, — that has always been the ex- 
pression of the closest union. 

For a man's joy in what he has to do is the heart and 
soul of his relation to it ; or rather it is the relation of 
his heart and soul to it. Faithfulness to one's work 



326 



The Joy with God. 



may be only an outside bondage, but joy in it is a rela- 
tionship of heart to heart, — of the heart of the man to 
the heart of his task. He, then, who enters into a 
worker's joy enters into fellowship with the worker's 
heart, and must come close to him. 

It follows from all this that there can be no sign of 
sharing a great man's greatness like the power to re- 
joice with him in the success of his great works ; and it 
is a kind of partnership with him which is open to any 
fellow-man who, however inferior to him in powers, 
however incapable of doing the great thing himself, is 
in such sympathy with the great man's fundamental de- 
sires that he is capable of being glad because his friend 
is glad. Here is where little men and great men may 
freely come together. You and I perhaps know nothing 
about natural science, but we hear that some great scien- 
tific discovery has been made, and instantly we think how 
glad the man must be who made it ; and in our rejoic- 
ing with him we are brought at once into an association 
with this new discovery which would otherwise have 
been entirely indifferent to us. We perhaps know noth- 
ing about art, but we see the artist's eye kindle as his 
inner vision of beauty takes color on canvas, or takes 
shape in stone ; and being glad that he is glad, we pass 
over through his human sympathy and have some part 
in that artistic triumph with which we could have 
established no direct connection. 

And even when the work is not the man's own but 
merely one which he is capable of appreciating as you 
are not, still your joy in his joy may be the means of 
introducing you to regions from which you would other- 



The Joy with God, 



327 



wise be entirely excluded. It may be that some great 
advance of Christianity is noted, — perhaps some ad- 
vance of Christian thought in which man's reverent 
study has reached a little deeper into the mystery of 
God, perhaps an advance of Christian activity by which 
the Gospel has filled some new darkness of heathenism 
with its light. You are glad, but you are not Christian 
enough to be very glad; but close at your side there 
stands a man who is Christian through and through. 
You can feel his soul leap and dilate. He looks round 
to you for sympathy in his delight, and you catch the 
kindling of his eye. Do you not know the process ? At 
first you are only glad that he is glad; but it cannot 
stop there. When you have gone as far as that, his 
gladness takes you into its power. Through him you 
pass over to his interest. You see that it must be a 
great joy which could make such a man so happy, and 
by and by you are glad with an echo of his gladness. 
You are triumphant over the same success of Christian- 
ity in which he so heartily rejoices. 

Herein lies the interpreting power of great enthusias- 
tic men. They bring out the value of things so that 
other men can see them. They stand with their need of 
human sympathy and look from the things which they 
love and admire to their fellow-men and cry to them, 
"Rejoice with us!" and it is in the effort to answer 
their demand for sympathy that the loveliness and admi- 
rableness of the thing they praise becomes apparent to the 
eyes of common men. This is what happens when you 
walk through a great picture gallery with a true artist. 
At first you are surprised, perhaps you are disgusted at 



328 



The Joy with God. 



yourself. You find yourselt praising the pictures that 
he praises and having no eyes for anything which he 
passes by with indifference. You say, " I have no mind 
of my own. I am his mere echo. I do not really like 
these things, I am only trying to like them because he 
does." But very possibly you are wrong. It is very 
likely that your artist companion is revealing to you 
what you are perfectly capable of appreciating, although 
you are not capable of discovering it. The revelation 
comes not through any formal lecture that he gives, but 
through the subtler and finer medium of sympathy with 
his delight. That it is real appreciation and not mere 
imitation you will feel sure when by and by you go back 
alone to the picture and find that still, though he is no 
longer with you, the charm which you felt in it through 
him remains. He has not blinded but enlightened your 
perceptions ; and, much as they may afterward develop 
their individuality and show how different they are from 
his, still they will always owe to him the debt for their 
first enlightenment, as the flower comes to shine in the 
sunlight with a color that is all its own, but yet would 
never have shone at all if the sunlight had not first 
shone upon it. 

I suppose that almost all one's patriotism gets more 
of its life in this way than we know. It is the great 
patriots that interpret the value of their country to the 
common citizen. The man absorbed in his own small 
affairs, or so restricted in his power of thought that he 
would never have taken in the national idea for himself 
abstractly, sees how Washington and Webster and Lin- 
coln loved the land ; and through their love for it, its 



The Joy with God. 



329 



worthiness of his own love becomes made known to him. 
Still his love for his country, when it is awakened, is his 
own, and may impel him to serve her in most peculiar 
personal ways, very different from theirs, but none the 
less it is true that but for the interpretation of these great 
men's honor for her, he would have honored his country 
less or not at all. 

Can we not see how necessary it is that all of us 
should live with men who are greater than ourselves, 
and try to share their joys ? We cannot afford to shut 
ourselves up to the value of those things whose value we 
ourselves are able to discover. Live with enthusiastic, 
noble men and you will find the world opening its in- 
spiring delights to you on every side. If charity to you 
is dull and stupid, if you cannot conceive what pleas- 
ure it can give to help the poor, go and put your life as 
close as possible to the most enthusiastic helper of the 
poor that you can find. Stand where, when he Las made 
a poor man's lot the brighter and looks round for some 
one with whom to share his pleasure, his kindling eye 
shall fall on you. That is the truest way, — to put your- 
self at least close to the gate which leads to the delight 
in charity, even though it be only close to it on the out- 
side. When he turns round and says to you, " Rejoice 
with me, for I have made an unhappy man happy, " then 
it may be that the door will open and you too can go 
in yourself to the delightful service of your fellow- 
men ! 

But now it is time to turn more directly to our text. 
In the parable of Jesus it is the shepherd returning 
from his search with the rescued sheep upon his shoul- 



330 



The Joy with God, 



ders who calls out to his friends, " Rejoice with me ! 99 
The Shepherd of the parable we know is Christ Himself, 
and Christ is the manifestation of God in the world. 
In this familiar picture, then, we have the voice of God 
calling on all His children to rejoice in the good work 
which He is able to do for any one of His children. 
Let me point out to you a few of the ideas which that 
picture suggests. Do we not feel at once how this agrees 
with all that we know about the will and ways of God ? 
Nothing that we have seen of Him ever gives us the 
idea of a great Lord standing outside of His estate and 
helping, however kindly, each one of His subjects by 
himself, without reference to the rest. God uses man 
to save his fellow-man. He brings in all the machinery 
of social life and folds it around the special soul which 
He wants to rescue, and bids it help, and delight in 
helping, the unfortunate and lost. This is the very 
commonplace of our observation of God's ways. He 
works through human means, we say. And at the root 
of this disposition to rescue man by man — to work by 
human means — I am sure that there lies the fact of a 
very close and vital and essential union between God 
and man ; that old truth to which we are forever coming 
back. When God calls in the aid of man for fellow- 
man, or when God summons man to rejoice in fellow- 
man's salvation, it is not a baffled workman calling for 
help to do work which he cannot do himself, nor is it a 
conqueror commanding the crowd to shout his praises. 
It is something wholly different from either. It is the 
father of a family gathering around himself the other 
children and telling them of the need or of the rescue of 



The Joy with God. 



331 



one child whose interests are theirs as well as his, in 
saving whom they and he are really one. 

You have a friend who has fallen into some wretched 
vice. As clearly as if God's voice spoke to you out of 
the sky you hear the divine summons to go and rescue 
that poor soul. You go, and by and by that soul is 
brought back into purity and honesty again ; and then 
there comes into your heart that old familiar conscious- 
ness which has been in such multitudes of hearts, that 
it is not really you but God who has saved him. It is 
God using you. Behind your power you feel a stronger 
power. Above your joy you are aware of another joy as 
much more joyous as the perception of the wretchedness 
of the vice from which the rescued soul has escaped is 
more intense. That joy and your joy are not two but 
one. Your joy rests upon and is fed out of that joy as 
the sunlight rests upon and is fed out of the sun. Never 
are your soul and God's soul so near together as in that 
common joy; never are you more perfectly and con- 
sciously his child than when, in a delight which cannot 
be divided and portioned into shares between you, but 
is blended and mingled as one single emotion, you re- 
joice together over the finding of the sheep which was 
lost. 

Another thought which is suggested by the picture is 
the need of God for human sympathy. In many forms 
that idea is seen floating through the Bible. It is not 
easy to grasp. When we try to define it and realize it 
in detail it often eludes us and bewilders us, sometimes 
it almost shocks us ; but we feel its fascination, and we 
know that there is truth in it. God's need of human 



332 



The Joy with God. 



sympathy! At first it seems as if there were some 
weakening in our conception of God in such a thought 
as that. That God should care what we poor mortals 
think about His ways, that it should make any differ- 
ence to Him whether we see the beauty of His character 
and love, — that seems to weaken Him. Why should 
He not go on His way, content with His own perfec- 
tion, regardless of what we or any other creatures in His 
universe may think of what He does ? That, we say, is 
our idea of the greatest greatness. But is it ? It is our 
first idea, no doubt. Our earliest thought of greatness 
is entire self-containment ; but by and by that thought 
becomes crude and vulgar in comparison with another 
loftier and finer thought which comes up to take its 
place. By and by always the greatest men are seen ful- 
filling their greatness by an earnest and loving demand 
that lesser natures should complete their happiness by 
sharing it. The savior of his country wins not less 
but more respect, does not detract from but increase 
his dignity, when a new lustre kindles in his eye at the 
sight of men, women, and little children who come 
crowding round him with shouts of triumph over the 
liberty and peace which he has won for them. The 
same is true of God. It is the passage from the low 
and crude into the loftier and finer thought of God 
when we conceive of Him as caring for His children's 
thought of Him. 

It is the sign of how fine and high and true the Bible 
thought of God is that the pages of the Old and New 
Testaments are full of this idea. It comes to its com- 
pletest utterance in Christ, in the sublime sensitive- 



The Joy with God. 



333 



ness of the character of Him who, while He never 
swerved an inch out of His path to win a man's ap- 
plause or to escape a sneer, yet lets us freely see through 
His transparent story how the face grows sad when the 
half-hearted disciples turn their back on Him and go 
away, and how it brightens when Peter calls Him the 
world's Saviour, or when even in the agony of death a 
fellow-sufferer cries out to Him for mercy and owns 
Him as the King of Paradise. Surely it sets some of 
our false ideas of greatness right, and lets us see that 
the truest dignity is to be attained not in separation 
from our brethren but in closest sympathy with them, 
even in urgent need of them, when we hear Christ, full 
of the manifested power and mercy of God, appealing to 
men to rejoice with Him in the fulfilment of His 
glorious work. 

Again the summons of God for men to join Him in 
His joy appears to open a new region of motive, which, 
if it really becomes influential with any of us, must 
become very strong indeed in inciting us to noble work. 
Who does not know how we need every motive which 
we can have to keep us faithful to the good works which 
we know ought to be done, but fr&m which our hands 
so often drop discouraged ? The pleasure of the task 
itself; the haun and misery which will result if some 
one does not do it ; the gratitude of those for whom it 
is directly undertaken ; the sympathy and honor of our 
fellow-men, — I am sure that there ai-e many of you who 
hear me who have often and often summoned all of 
these motives and bidden them inspire your hesitating 
will to do some half-attractive, half-repugnant duty of 



334 



The Joy with God. 



righteousness or charity. Perhaps some of you now, 
with such a duty just before you, are calling almost 
desperately for these powerful champions to come and 
strengthen your weakness, lest you fail. And yet, with 
all the strength that comes from them, how weak you 
are ! Can you imagine another motive which, without 
interfering with or crowding out any of these, might 
possibly come in and multiply their strength with all 
the intenseness of your love for God ? What if you 
could know that if you did that duty bravely and faith- 
fully God would be glad ; what if you could know that 
if you thought out your hard problem honestly, or over- 
came your lust manfully, God would send down His 
message to you, " I am rejoicing with you, oh, my child ; 
come and rejoice with me that you have conquered ! " 
Would not that make you stronger ? Would it not be 
as if at last the captain had joined his hesitating and 
imperilled army when such a motive as that came in, 
shining and confident, among the half-dismayed and 
frightened motives which had been trying to rally and 
lead on your life. 

But a man may be sure of that, a man must be sure 
of that, if he is genuinely certain that there is a God at 
all. From the shop-boy tempted to steal, up to the 
leader of some goodly cause tempted to lower his stand- 
ard in discouragement, there is no human being set to 
do duty who may not, if he will, throw behind his own 
weakness this great strength. " If I can only persevere, 
if I only can be faithful, I may rejoice with God ! If I 
fail and give up, the door closes upon that inmost cham- 
ber of the soul's company with God in which it shares 



The Joy with God. 



335 



His joy." There are souls as incapable of feeling the 
power of that motive as a deaf man is of responding to 
the trumpet ; but to any soul which can feel it and an- 
swer to it there comes strength which almost insures 
success. 

All these are ways in which it helps a man when he 
hears God calling upon him to rejoice with Him in His 
salvation of the world. But I think on the whole that 
there is no help coming to us out of such a summons 
which helps us more than that which corresponds to the 
enlightenment that I tried to describe at the beginning 
of my sermon as coming from man to man when such an 
invitation passes from one to the other. When God bids 
us rejoice with Him in the salvation of a soul, it is a 
revelation to us of what a precious thing a soul must be. 
I pictured the artist going through a gallery and bidding 
you rejoice with him in some great picture, and I bade 
you remember how in the light of his summons you 
saw the picture's greatness. I pictured the patriot 
interpreting the value of their country to the great host 
of his duller fellow-citizens. Now think what an il- 
lumination must come to a man who is working slug- 
gishly for some good cause when the fact of God's love 
for what he works for gets into his heart. You are 
working along in our sluggish missionary way, doing 
with weary punctiliousness your yearly task for the con- 
version of the world, contributing when Epiphany comes 
round a little piece of money of such a size that if every 
man in the church contributed as much once every year 
the Gospel would be preached to all the world in about a 
hundred thousand years. As you are lounging so over 



336 



Tlie Joy with God. 



your task, you hear of some heathen tribe which has cast 
away its idols and accepted Christ. You know what that 
means for them. You know it means a new, clean life, 
family purity, education, liberty, the lifting of all life 
into self-respect, and the quickening of the vision and 
the hope of souls which used to lie in darkness and the 
shadow of death. You read the news, and you think it 
is a good thing, and then you are just about to turn back 
to your business when out of heaven there comes down a 
voice to you, crying, " Rejoice with me ! Rejoice with 
me ! " It is the voice of God ! The God of the spirits 
of all flesh. Behold ! to Him this bit of tidings from 
the southern seas seems to be full of glory. Can you 
hear His summons and not see anew how glorious the 
tidings are ? 

Some friend here by your side attains to a new life, 
casts off the sloth or vice which has been crushing 
him into a brute and begins to live for God. He 
begins to know his own soul. He grows ashamed of 
sin. He sees visions of purity and spiritual growth be- 
fore him which make time and eternity glow with hope. 
He sets himself down to the long, hard, patient, glow- 
ing struggle of duty. He takes his stand on Christ's 
side. He breaks his old comradeship and calls all 
good men his brethren ; and you, a good man, a Chris- 
tian man, say, " I am glad of it. My friend always was 
kindly and honest, now he is all right. He has joined 
the church. He is where he ought to be. " And then, 
perhaps, you set yourself to wondering what sort of a 
church it is that he has joined, and noticing whether 
he bows in the creed or not, and asking whether he is 



The Joy with God. 



337 



going to be a high churchman or a low churchman! 
And just then comes the song of the Shepherd, bringing 
home His treasure, " Rejoice with Me, for I have found 
My sheep which was lost." That is what this man's 
conversion means for Jesus Christ. It is a lost soul 
rescued into the family of God, and the heart of the 
family is richer for the return of this lost fragment. 
Is there no revelation there for you which makes the 
whole transaction seem a different thing ? Is not your 
brother's soul more precious when you see how Christ 
cares for it ? Do you not want to help your Lord in the 
completion of that soul's salvation, even as the under- 
shepherds might have run to meet the rescuer whose 
voice they heard, and taken his burden off his shoul- 
ders, and tended the rescued sheep, and fed it until it 
was strong again, — as they might have done all this 
when they read the value of the sheep in what their 
Lord was ready to do to save it ? 

You hear of the partial success of some good cause. 
You know the cause is good, but men despise it ; they 
call it fanatical, quixotic, or something else as foolish. 
Some day it wins a success, and you are glad, but you 
keep your gladness to yourself. You hear men in the 
streets sneering at this unpopular thing which is pre- 
sumptuously daring to be successful without their sup- 
port, and you are slavish and cowardly and hold your 
peace. What a rebuke and what a freedom comes when 
out of heaven you hear the voice of Christ triumphant 
ever this, over which the streets and the clubs are so 
contemptuous, and calling to you, "Rejoice with me, 
for another of my good causes has succeeded. " This is 

22 



338 



The Joy with God. 



the way in which causes often get possession of the 
world. The men who are most in sympathy with God 
become aware that God rejoices in the cause's success; 
so they have its desert interpreted to them till they too 
desire it earnestly; and then in their turn they in- 
terpret to their fellow-men what God has first inter- 
preted to them, till ultimately the fire which starts 
from the central heart of all runs through the world, 
and the blindest are enlightened to discern, and the 
most timid become bold enough to praise, the move- 
ment which at first had no friend but God. 

I know that when I speak thus I am drawing out into 
distinct definition what, as it works in the human soul, 
is only vaguely realized. It is not analyzed as I have 
tried to analyze it. It lies in the memory as a half- 
conscious experience. But yet I think that as I close I 
may appeal to your experiences and ask you to bear 
witness to what I have been saying. If ever, as you 
worked conscientiously but feebly at some good work, 
you have been conscious, however dimly, that you were 
not working alone but that your work was dear in some 
way to the Heart on which all our life rests ; if ever, 
trying to help your brethren, you have known as a richer 
motive than your love for them the love of God to whom 
their souls were dear ; if ever duty, struck for an instant 
by the certainty that it was God's wish, has blazed into 
sudden beauty as a diamond blazes when it is smitten 
by the sun, — in any of those experiences you have 
known what it was to hear God call to you, "Come, 
rejoice with Me ! " 

It must be a noble, happy life which lives in such 



The Joy with God. 



339 



experiences all the time. It must be a life calm, ex- 
alted, active, independent ; and yet see how simple are 
the conditions of such a life ! It is simply a life whose 
ears are open, through constant sympathy with God, to 
hear what God loves and desires, and whose heart has so 
accepted Him as its Master that His desires become its 
desires through its admiring love. They are sublime 
conditions, but they are wonderfully simple. They are 
the conditions which any soul must reach which has 
been really brought back out of its sins and forgiven and 
reconciled to God by Jesus Christ. Into that life, by 
what way He chooses, may He bring us all ! 



XX. 



THE ILLUMINATION OF OBEDIENCE. 
Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it. — John ii. 5. 

Through the mists of long and devout tradition which 
have obscured her character and made her very person 
almost mythical we are surprised sometimes in reading 
the Gospels at the clearness and simplicity with which 
Mary the mother of our Lord stands out before us there. 
She speaks only on three occasions, but when she speaks 
her words have such a directness and transparency 
about them, they come so short and true, they are so 
perfectly the words that an earnest and unselfish woman 
would have spoken that they leave us the clearest and 
most satisfactory idea of what manner of woman she 
must have been. Those three utterances of hers are 
like three clear notes of a bell, that show how sound 
and rich its metal is. Think what they were. In the 
presence of the messenger who comes to tell her of her 
great privilege she bows her head and says, " Behold the 
handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to thy 
word. " When she finds her son in the temple she cries 
out to Him, " Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us ? 
Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing. 99 When 
she stands with Him before the puzzled guests at Cana 
she turns to the servants and says, "Whatsoever He 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



341 



saith unto you, do it." The young soul's consecration! 
The mother's overrunning love ! The disciple's perfect 
loyalty! What can be clearer than the simple, true, 
brave, loving woman that those words reveal ? How 
all the poor tawdry mythology which has clustered 
about her, and called her the Queen of Heaven, disap- 
pears before the vastly deeper beauty of this true woman 
of the earth, who wins our confidence and love. 

I want to speak to-day of the last of those three words, 
and some of its suggestions. You remember the circum- 
stances, but let me repeat them once more in the words 
of the ever-fresh and beautiful old story. "And the 
third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and 
the mother of J esus was there. And both Jesus was 
called and His disciples to the marriage. And when 
they wanted wine the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, 
They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman 
what have I to do with thee, my hour is not come. 
His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever He 
saith unto you, do it." It is a moment of bewilder- 
ment. The impatient guests are asking for what the 
host has not to give them. The mother of J esus turns 
to Him, but He seems to put her suggestion back. 
There is an air of embarrassment about it all. She and 
the guests are puzzled, and then she says to them, as 
if that were the only outlet and escape from their per- 
plexity, "Do what He bids you do." It is as if she 
said, "I do not understand Him, I do not know what 
He means or why He speaks as you have heard Him 
speak, but the only way for Him to interpret Himself is 
to say what He wants done, and you and I in doing it 



342 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



will see exactly what He means. Therefore, whatever 
He saith unto you, do it. " We ask ourselves at once, 
where had she learned this of her son ? And we re- 
member that since the last glimpse the Gospel gave us 
of them, they have been quietly living together, mother 
and son, at Nazareth. There she had studied Him 
with a love that must have been more and more filled 
with reverence. There she had realized the mystery of 
His nature. And one of the things which her experi- 
ence of Him had taught her must have been just this : 
that often there were meanings and ideas which He in- 
tended to convey which could not be set forth in words, 
but which must be displayed in action, — in the com- 
pletely sympathetic action of two beings working to- 
gether with a common will. Can we not picture many 
a time in the intercourse of their quiet home in which 
this must have come to her, — times when some deep 
mysterious word fell from His lips which awed and 
fascinated her, perhaps, but of which she could make no 
clear meaning, and when, as she watched His actions and 
helped them, doing all that He wanted her to do, there 
gradually came out from His action the meaning which 
was in His words, but which they could not perfectly 
express ? I think their life together must have been 
full of such experiences. There is something like it in 
the relation that all thoughtful and watchful parents 
hold to their little children. How often you have 
watched their actions and quietly helped them out, and 
learned from them what they were wholly powerless to 
put in words ! There are always some childlike people 
of whom we feel that the only true expression must be 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



343 



in the working out of their activity. They cannot tell 
their meaning except in deeds. We feel something of 
the same kind in our intercourse with Nature. We try 
to catch her messages, to put ourselves into sympathy 
with the vague spirit which breathes through all her life ; 
but at the last we learn that it is only by obedience, 
only by helping her works to their completest by our 
service and by attentive study of the things she does, 
that we come really to know this mysterious life of 
Nature on whose bosom we are living. Whatsoever she 
saith unto you, do it. Obey Nature and she will reveal 
herself to your obedience, — is not that the real watch- 
word of our modern science ? 

And like that, only more deep and holy, was the law 
which the mother of Jesus had learned in the treatment 
of her Son. That only by doing His will, even when 
it was darkest, could she truly come to the light which 
she knew was in Him. 

It sounds perhaps at first as if the words of Mary were 
a mere utterance of despair ; as if she said, " I cannot 
make Him out. He is far away above us. It is not 
for us to try to make Him out. Such as we are cannot 
understand such as He is. All we can do is just to 
take His commandments in the dark, and do them in the 
dark, and be content. " But if what I have just said is 
true, the tone of the words is not despair but hope. She 
does not say, " We cannot know Him ; " she only says, 
" He must take His own way to make us know Him, to 
make Himself known to us. We cannot understand His 
words. Let us see what He does. Let us put ourselves 
into His action by obedience, and we shall understand 



344 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



Him, " Surely she struck there the note of all the best 
Christian experience that has come since, through all 
the ages. How familiar has become the grand and sim- 
ple way in which the soul which has been puzzled with 
the words of Jesus may stand still and say, " Lord, re 
7 eal Thyself to me in dealing with me. I will not 
hinder Thee. I will obey Thee. Whatsoever Thou say- 
est unto me I will do it, and so I shall reach the true 
knowledge of Thee which my soul craves. " A man has 
studied Christ in all the books. He has sat still and 
meditated, and tried to see through His meditation 
into the very face of Christ whom he has longed to 
understand; and he has not succeeded. Christ has 
seemed to elude him. He would not show Himself. 
He has almost seemed to lay His hand upon the eyes of 
the inquiring man as if He said, " What have I to do ? 
Mine hour is not yet come. " But then the man looks 
up and sees a duty, — a very hard one it may be, — or 
sees a burden which is very heavy. It is evidently 
coming toward him. He cannot escape it. Suppose 
that he is lifted up to such a knowledge of it all that he 
is ready with all his heart to say, " I do not want to es- 
cape it. If God sends it, God is in it. God sends noth- 
ing, God brings everything. Whatever comes from 
God has the God whom it comes from in its heart 
This, then, is He that is coming to me. What He 
could not tell me in words about Himself, I shall learn 
in this touch — what men call this blow — of His hand 
which I see approaching. " Oh, it is possible so to look 
forward to a great, an awful experience, with something 
that is truly triumph filling all the pain and drowning 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



345 



all the dread, so to look to disaster, to sickness, to be- 
reavement, to death, saying, "Now I shall know! Li 
submissive acceptance of God's will I shall understand 
that which no study of His words could teach me. " 

But yet our verse does not allow us to forget that all 
true waiting for Christ's self-revelation is of an active 
and not merely of a passive sort. "Whatsoever He 
saith unto you, do it, " says Mary. There is something 
to be done in order that Jesus may show out completely 
what He is trying to make manifest. And here, I 
think, is where a human action mounts to its highest 
dignity, and puts on its fullest meaning. There are 
two views of human actions. One looks on them as 
they are in themselves, seeing only the force and 
friction which is involved in the specific thing that is 
done, and in the will of the immediate doer ; the other 
regards them as setting free for expression and effect 
some higher force and purpose, — the force and purpose 
of God which are waiting behind. One is the purely 
human, the other is the divine view of human action. 
It is as when you turn a screw in some great engine. 
A child who sees it turned thinks only of the hand 
which he sees turning it, and sees only the twisting of 
that bit of brass ; but to the man who knows the engine 
the turning of that screw is the setting free of the im- 
prisoned steam to do its work. And so with human 
actions. Take any one. You engage to-morrow, it 
may be, in a new business, take a new partner, and be- 
gin to sell new goods in a new store. To one man that 
may mean the setting forth by your own will in search 
of fortune, — nothing more than that; to another man 



346 



The Illumination of Obedience, 



it may mean what we can reverently call the opening up 
to God of chances to show Himself, and work effects 
which have been seemingly impossible before. New 
combinations, new contacts, will result out of that act 
of yours, new needs of divine illumination, of divine 
guidance are sure to come ; and if man's need is indeed 
God's opportunity, then this new enterprise of yours 
will surely open some new chink through which the 
everlasting light can shine, or build some wall against 
which the everlasting and all-loving voice can echo. 
And so it is with everything you do. You make a 
friend, you read a book, you take a journey, you buy a 
house, you write a letter, and so full is the great 
world of God, so is He waiting everywhere to make 
Himself known and to give Himself away, that through 
this act of yours, to men who are looking and listening, 
there comes some revelation of His nature and some 
working of His power. Acts become little or great only 
according to the degree in which God manifests Himself 
and works through them. To call acts insignificant or 
important in themselves is as if a child looked into an 
engine-room and judged of the importance of different 
parts of the machinery by the size of the handles that 
moved them. The slightest handle may set free the 
great power of the steam. To one who listens wisely, 
the click of a delicate needle may sound as awful as the 
thunder of the walking-beam. For acts have their true 
meanings in the points of manifestation and operation 
which they give to God. It was not because she knew 
that somehow they would have wine or something 
better, it was because her Son would surely show Him- 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



347 



self through their obedience, if they obeyed Him, that 
Mary cared what these servants did. It is strange to 
think what a dignity and interest our own actions 
might have for us if we constantly recognized this ca- 
pacity in them which they have not now. We play 
with bits of glass, finding great pleasure in their pleas- 
ant shapes, but never knowing what glorious things they 
would be if we held them up and let the sun shine 
through them. 

It is necessary for us to recognize that this quality in 
Jesus which made it impossible that He should per> 
fectly reveal Himself except in His action on and 
through obedient men, is not something peculiar 
to Him. It belongs to the very substance of the hu- 
man nature which He had assumed. The first princi- 
ple of all influence is, that there is something in every 
nature which cannot be communicated by mere contact 
of intelligences. It must pass over, it can only pass 
over, from man to man through a sympathy of wills; 
and such a sympathy can exist between an inferior and 
a superior, between a less and a greater, only where there 
is loving obedience on one side and loving authority on 
the other. All the communications of men with one 
another lie as it were in two strata, — two stories 
with a floor between them ; one story is deeper than the 
other. In the upper, superficial story men tell each 
other what they know. All schools, all books, belong 
in this superficial region of companionship. In the 
deeper story men give each other what they are. All 
obedience of will to will, all trust of life in life, belongs 
in this profounder region. Do you not know the differ- 



348 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



ence ? You go to a man's school, or read his book, and 
there are great and precious tilings that pass from him 
to you. The facts which he has gathered in his industrL 
ous study, the ideas that have come forth like stars out 
of the darkness in his conscientious thought, — these he 
can give you and he does, and you are richer for them. 
He has only to teach ; you have only to attend and un- 
derstand. But by and by you come to know the man, 
to love him, to count his will a better expression of the 
will of God than your will. You obey him. Then at 
once is there not a new kind of communication be- 
tween your life and his ? Does he not give you things 
that he could not give before, — not only facts and 
ideas, but motives, hopes, fears, loves, dreads, inspi- 
rations ? You have passed from the upper to the deeper 
story of companionship, and the passage took place 
when you passed beyond listening and learning and be- 
gan to love and to obey. We all have benefactors with 
whom we live in one chamber or in the other, whom 
we meet in the upper or the lower regions of communi- 
cation. Our teachers we meet in the room of instruc- 
tion ; our masters, our saviors, we meet in the deeper 
room of influence and inspiration. The question of ques- 
tions, as concerns our Christian faith, is in which room 
we meet Christ. We certainly meet Him in the upper 
room where, as we listen, He tells us things we never 
could have known without Him. Does He meet us also 
in the deeper chamber where as we obey He reveals to us 
the very secret of His being and makes us like Himself ? 

There can be no doubt in which room He wants to 
meet us. The very fact that His coming was an Incar 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



349 



nation is a witness of how thoroughly He wanted to give 
Himself to us. And nothing is finer in the history of 
His disciples in the Gospels than to see how He led them 
down from the surface to the depths, — from the upper 
region in which they followed Him saying, "Master 
where dwellest Thou ? " and He answered, " Come and 
see, " to the profound revelation in which the prostrate 
disciple cried, " Who art Thou Lord ? " and the answer 
came to him from the sky, " Arise and go into the city, 
and it shall be told thee what thou shalt do. " The first 
is enlightenment through attention; the second is re- 
generation through obedience. In the first, knowledge 
is given through intelligence; in the second, life is 
given through the utterly submissive will. This was 
the essential difference between the teaching of Jesus 
and the teaching of the scribes which the simple- 
hearted people on the mountain felt so truly. This was 
the great transfer and deepening of the learning life to 
which the Lord invited His disciples when He said, 
"If any man will do My will, he shall know of the 
doctrine. " 

But then perhaps another question comes. " Intelli- 
gence comes by obedience you say. I shall hear what 
Christ has to say to me if I obey Him ; but can I obey 
Him till I first know what He has to say ? Have I a 
right to make myself the servant of 'any one till I know 
what it is that he will bid me do ? " Or, to take the 
simple picture of our story, had the mother of Jesus a 
right to bid any man do wnatever I o ; Son should say ? 
Had she the right to bid them obey one whom she did 
not understand ? Must she not wait till she sees what 



350 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



His commandments are before she can call on them for 
such unquestioning obedience ? The answer lies in the 
essential difference between faith and sight, those two 
acts of which men have so long talked so much, and of 
which it has sometimes seemed as if they understood so 
little. But how simple they are ! Faith is the knowl- 
edge of a person; sight is the perception of a thing. 
To believe anything on faith is to believe it because the 
person who tells it to me I am sure is trustworthy. To 
believe anything on sight is to believe it because I my- 
self perceive that it is true. I believe the sun is warm 
because it pours its gracious heat down upon my open 
hand. I believe that man, the child of God, is not born 
to die because God Himself, God manifest in Christ, has 
told me so. They are not different degrees of certainty, 
they are different kinds of certainty, — different grounds 
on which certainty may rest. And just as it evidently 
needs a different kind of a man to trust a personal na- 
ture and to examine the structure of a thing, so there 
will always be a certain broad difference between the 
men of faith and the men of sight. There is not the 
slightest antagonism between them, but the ideas are 
always distinct, always distinguishable. 

And now with this distinction clear in our minds, see 
what a perfect right one has — one who knows Christ by 
any true experience of His character as Mary knew Him 
— to bid other men obey Him even although they do not 
know what commandments He will give. You are a 
Christian, let us say. You have known this Lord of 
ours for many years. You have learned from many 
an experience to trust Him absolutely. Well, some 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



351 



day I come to you with a poor handful of confused ideas 
about Him, with a poor heartful of broken hopes, faded 
enthusiasms, disappointed expectations. "See, I am 
all lost, I can make nothing of life ! " I cry to you ; 
" What shall I do ? " And you just turn to me and 
point to Christ, and say, "Obey Him, follow Him. 
Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it. " It is an aston- 
ishing answer. I am not ready for it. I turn on you 
and say, " Follow Him ! Why ? Where will He lead 
me ? What will He make me do ? " And your answer 
is, " I do not know. If I did know I should not need to 
point you to Him. I need then only point you to your 
task. I only know He cannot lead you wrong. I do 
not know His way, but I know Him. " That is faith. 
And if I still persist, and say I will not promise to 
obey Him until I know just what He will have me do, 
so that I can see for myself that it is the best thing to 
be done, then I am asking not for faith but for sight. 
How simple it is. I hear men praying everywhere for 
more faith, but when I listen to them carefully and get 
at the real heart of their prayers, very often it is not 
more faith at all that they are wanting, but a change 
from faith to sight. " What shall I do with this sor- 
row that God has sent me ? " " Take it up and bear it, 
and get a strength and blessing out of it. " " Ah, if I 
only knew what blessing there was in it, if I saw how 
it would help me, then I could bear it like a plume ! " 
"What shall I do with this hard, hateful duty which 
Christ has laid right in my way ? " " Do it, and grow 
by doing it." "Ah, yes; if I could only see that it 
would make me grow. " In both these cases do you not 



352 



The Illumination of Obedience, 



see that what you are begging for is not more faith, al- 
though you think it is, but sight. You want to see for 
yourself the blessing in the sorrow, the strength in the 
hard and hateful task. Faith says not, " I see that it 
is good for me, and so God must have sent it, " but " God 
sent it, and so it must be good for me. " Faith walking 
in the dark with God only prays Him to clasp its hand 
more closely, does not even ask Him for the lifting of 
the darkness so that the man may find the way himself. 
Mary is all faith when she says, "Do what He tells you, 
and all must come right simply because He is He. " 
Blessed the heart that has learned such a faith and can 
stand among men in all their doubts and darknesses 
and just point to Jesus Christ, and say, " Do His will 
and everything must come right with you. I do not 
know how, but I know Him. God forbid that I should 
try to lead you, but I can put your hand in His hand 
and bid you go where He shall carry you ! " 

There is a reason then ; Mary had a right to say what 
she said to the servants. We may have good right to 
say the same thing to ourselves and to each other. 
There is one complete act by which a man is justified in 
taking his whole life and giving it over into the keep- 
ing and authority of a Being whom he has thoroughly 
tried and perfectly trusts. That is the act of faith ; an 
act, as I trust you see, not irrational but full of the pro- 
foundest spiritual reason. There is a conviction of our 
Friend's trustworthiness so large and deep that we know 
He must be universal. He is not ours alone. He is all 
men's if they will trust Him too, and so it is possible 
for us to turn to every man we meet and, out of the 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



353 



perfect certainty of our own heart, say to him, " Do this 
great act. Make this my Lord your Lord. Whatso- 
ever He saith unto you, do it. " That is the preaching 
of faith, — the consummate work that any man can do 
as it regards his fellow-man, surpassing utterly all the 
most wise and watchful care and suggestion about the 
details and special actions of the life, this claiming of 
the life as one great whole for its true Lord. 

Think what there must come — I rejoice to know that 
to many of you I may say, Remember what has come — 
with such a complete acceptance of the overlying and 
surrounding authority of Christ. The two things that 
men's lives want most as they grow older are, I think, 
simplicity and independence. We become broken and 
scattered among a thousand interests until life has no 
unity, and we become fettered by a hundred gradually- 
accumulated obligations, till, without ever having de- 
liberately given ourselves away, we grow aware, with a 
dull and heavy consciousness, that we are no longer our 
own, and cannot act ourselves. The only restoration of 
both — of simplicity and independence — must come, not 
by the cutting off of our relationships and the rebellion 
against authorities, — that would be ruining the life in 
the vain attempt to save it, — but by enveloping all the 
relationships in one great relationship, and by subor- 
dinating all the authorities to one great authority. 
The child's life is simple and independent. He can 
think of it as a unit, and he can walk across false mas- 
teries which try to govern him almost without seeing 
them. And why ? Because his life is held, firmly and 
warmly, in another life. It may be that you have lost 

23 



354 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



this privilege and power of the child. If you are like 
most men, you certainly have lost it. How shall you get 
it back ? There is only one way, — you must be a child 
again. You must be converted and become like a child. 
Not by cutting your life down and making it meagre will 
you make it simple, not by making it restive and rebel- 
lious will you make it independent ; but if ever, to-day or 
any other golden day, — though to-day is the best day 
in which to do it that you will ever see, — if ever you 
can take your life and, won by His love and justified by 
the abundant assurance of His faithfulness that He has 
given you, you can give your life away to Christ, saying 
as the comprehensive law of all your action, " Whatso- 
ever Thou sayest unto me, 0 Lord, I will do it, " then 
simplicity and independence will open around you like 
the peace around the disciples when their Lord was in 
their storm-tossed boat. Then you may make your re- 
lations with your fellow-men as rich and full as possible. 
You may accumulate the dependences which make the 
sweetness and value of a life on every side, but, held in 
the grasp of that great loyalty, the multiplicity of life 
shall make and not destroy simplicity ; and you shall be 
men's servant without being their slave, just as Jesus 
was, when you are as truly His servant as He was the 
servant of His Father. 

I have talked freely this morning about obeying Christ, 
about doing whatever Christ says to us. I know that 
there are some souls among you in which such words 
have started anew the question and the doubt which has 
often haunted them before. I must try to show where 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



355 



the answer to that question lies, before I let you go. 
You say, " I would indeed obey if Christ should speak 
to me, but can He speak ? Can I hear Him and be sure 
it is His voice ? Oh, if I only could have been there 
where He lived in the flesh ! Then I should have known 
that it was He. Now, is it not all a vague figure of 
speech when you talk to me about obeying Jesus, a Jesus 
whom I never saw, whose voice I never heard ? " The 
question is one that easily becomes confused in theory, 
but practically I believe that it is much clearer than 
we think. "Obeying Christ," we say; and what is 
Christ ? I think over all that I know of Him, and this 
is what He is : First, He is the utterance of the eternal 
righteousness, the setting forth before men of that su- 
preme nature in which there is the source and pattern 
of all goodness, — God ; second, He is a man of clear, 
sharp, definite character, who lived a life in Palestine 
which still shines with a distinctness that no other hu- 
man life can rival ; third, by His spirit He is a perpet- 
ual presence, a constant standard and inspiration in the 
heart of every man who loves and trusts Him. All 
those things come up to me when I say " Christ. " And 
now can such a Christ speak to me ? Can He say to me, 
" Do this ? " If as I think about some act which it is 
possible for me to do, there rise up about that act these 
three convictions : First, that it is right, that it is in 
harmony with that great, constant goodness which fills 
the world and comes from God ; second, that that man 
in Palestine would have done it if it had offered itself 
to Him there as it offers itself to me here ; and third, 
that if I do it now, my own soul will be fed and strength- 



356 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



ened. If these three convictions come and gather round 
that act, and take it up and lay it before my conscience 
and my heart, then I know Christ is bidding me do it. 
Is that clear ? There is some act that you are ques 
tioning, about to-morrow or to-day. If Jesus were at 
hand, you would go out and ask Him, — " Is it Thy will 
that I should do it, oh, my Lord ? " Can you not ask 
Him now ? Is the act right ? Would He do it ? Will 
it help your soul ? It is not often that a man really is 
in doubt who seriously wants to know the answer to any 
of these questions. And if the answer to them all is 
u yes ! " then it is just as truly His command that you 
should do that act as if His gracious figure stood before 
your sight and His finger visibly pointed to the task. 
You say, perhaps, " I might know that an act was right 
and that would be enough, without bringing in Christ at 
all. Why need I think of it as His command ? " Only 
because He is just that, — the reassertion, the enforce- 
ment of essential duty. He does not make righteous- 
ness, He reveals it ; and when the soul that loves Him 
does an act at His command it is conscious that it is 
doing that which in the very nature of things, in the 
very nature of God, it was bound to do. 

But let us not grow confused with many words. I 
turn to your own consciences, dear friends. Is there 
nothing that Christ as your friend, your Lord, your Sa- 
viour, wants you to do that you are leaving undone to- 
day ? Do you doubt one instant that with His high and 
deep love for your soul, He wants you to pray ? — And 
do you pray ? Do you doubt one instant that it is His 
will that you should honor and help and bless all these 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



357 



men about you who are His brethren ? — And are you do- 
ing anything like that ? Do you doubt one instant that 
His will is that you should make life serious and lofty ? 
— And are you making it frivolous and low ? Do you 
doubt one instant that He wants you to be pure in deed 
and word and thought ? — And are you pure ? Do you 
doubt one instant that His command is for you openly to 
own Him and declare that you are His servant before 
all the world ? — And have you done it ? These are the 
questions which make the whole matter clear. No, not 
in quiet lanes, nor in bright temple-courts as once He 
spoke, and not from blazing heavens as men seem some- 
times to expect, — not so does Christ speak to us. And 
yet He speaks ! I know what He, there in His glory, 
He here in my heart, wants me to do to-day, and I know 
that I am not mistaken in my knowledge. It is no 
guess of mine. It is His voice that tells me. 

How full of mystery and light our life becomes as we 
go on into it, not knowing what there will be there for 
us to do, but knowing that through it all He will be 
with us and in us giving us His commandments, and 
resolved only on this, that whatsoever He shall say to 
us, we will do it always. What will He say ? What 
wondrous new commandments has He in reserve which, 
as we lovingly obey them, are to make the interest and 
growth and glory of these coming years ? 

And let us remember that here, in what we have been 
thinking of this morning, lies the real bond of union 
between this life and what we choose to call " the other 
life, " — the life that lies beyond the grave. There as 
here obedience to Christ and everlasting revelation of 



358 



The Illumination of Obedience. 



Christ to the obedient soul is to be the essence and de- 
light of life. Oh, my dear friends, let us do whatsoever 
He saith unto us now, that then we may be ready for 
the higher duties and the completer revelations which 
He will have to give us through eternity. 



XXI. 



THE CERTAIN END. 
Then cometh the end. — 1 Cor. xv. 24. 

It is not possible to rule these words out of life. 
They are perpetually recurring. You tell of any pro- 
cess ; you trace out how it is going to work on from step 
to step ; you see how cause opens into effect and then 
effect, becoming cause, opens into still further effect 
beyond, — but always, by and by, your thought comes 
to a stoppage and a change. The process is exhausted. 
"Then cometh the end." Your story has to round 
itself with that. 

We look into a child's face and imagine the life which 
he will live. We see him growing up from childhood 
into manhood; all the works that he will do, all the 
truths that he will learn, all the associations that he 
will form, roll out their length before us: we let our 
eye run along their course ; but at last we must reach the 
point where, "Then cometh the end," sums up and 
closes all. 

You start upon a new business, you build you a new 
house, you set on foot some new measure of public policy, 
you begin some new study, you enter some new school, 
— whatever you do, however long are the anticipations 
of what you undertake, there is where they all arrive at 



360 



The Certain End. 



last. " Then corueth the end, " is written, however far 
away, as the conclusion which all must reach. 

And if we go far out beyond the little reach of our 
own personal affairs, still it is the same. Our text is 
telling us of Christ. Here is the great work which He 
is doing, conquering death, redeeming men from sin, 
claiming the world for God ; but even of His work it is 
written, " Then cometh the end, when he shall have de- 
livered up the kingdom to God, even the Father ; when 
He shall have put down all rule and all authority and 
power. " Even the great redemptive work of Christ must 
some day be folded up and finished, and some new dis- 
pensation, some longer expression of the life of God 
upon the life of men must come to take its place. 

This constant recurrence of ends and finishing places 
in life must certainly mean something. It may beget 
a mere frivolity. It may make it seem as if nothing 
were worth beginning very earnestly or prosecuting 
very thoroughly. " What is the use ? " a man may say. 
" If every thing I do, every bit of work I undertake, is 
to be hurried up and tossed aside for a new work, if my 
whole life is some morning to be rounded off where 
that morning happens to find it, and the poor-finished, 
unfinished thing is to be flung into the basket, and an- 
other life is to be set up on these spindles of circum- 
stances where mine is whirling now, what is the use ? 
Why should I be thoughtful ? Why should I be 
serious ? Let me eat, drink, and be merry. 99 

Another man gets out of precisely the same state of 
things a totally different impression. This quick, 
sharp beat in life, this constant coming round to where 



The Certain End. 



361 



the shears cut off the work, and where if it is not done 
it has to stay undone forever, this perpetual ripening 
of processes which makes the seed-time of new pro- 
cesses beyond, this constant ending and beginning, 
gives a freshness and vitality to living which is exhil- 
arating and delightful. It seems to be always bringing 
life back to report itself to its first principles and fun- 
damental motives. It is forever breaking up routines 
and starting things anew. It demands briskness and 
promptness. " Now or never you must do this thing, " 
it seems to say, "for in a few moments the chance is 
over and then cometh the end." 

Let us think of this characteristic of life and try to 
see what it means. Let us see what sort of temper and 
spirit it ought to produce, — this law of life that all 
things come to an end, that only by perpetual stoppage 
and re-starting is motion kept up, only by perpetual 
perishing is life maintained. 

And we may begin by noting this, — which is the 
most striking thing about the whole matter, — the way 
in which men's desire and men's dread are both called 
out by this constant coming of the ends of things. The 
human soul, as I have been saying, at once delights in 
and shudders at this perpetual finishing and re-begin- 
ning, this stopping and re-starting of the works of life. 

Look first at man's desire of the end. It is, in the 
most superficial aspect of it, a part of his dread of mo- 
notony. There is something very pathetic, it seems to 
me, in man's instinctive fear of being wearied with 
even the most delightful and satisfactory of all the ex- 
periences which he meets with in the world. Is it not 



362 



The Certain End. 



a sign, one of the many signs, of man's sense that his 
nature is made for larger worlds than this, and only 
abides here temporarily and in education for destinies 
which shall be more worthy of its capacities ? The 
friendship which seems to give you all that your heart 
requires, the occupation which seems to call out all your 
powers, the opinions which embody your whole present 
view of truth, — all of these, if you come to be more 
than you are now, must fail you, and prove insufficient. 
Even this earthly life itself, delightfully rich and vari- 
ous as it is, deep has been the instinct in the human 
heart which has felt that it would be a terrible thing to 
have it last forever. "I would not live alway," has 
been a true cry of the human soul. The wandering 
Jew, compelled to live on until the Saviour came again, 
has been one of the most fearful figures which have 
haunted the imagination of mankind. Man's mere 
dread of monotony, his sense of the awful weariness of 
living forever, has always made him rejoice that, far off 
but still in sight, down the long avenues of living, he 
could read the inscription of release, " Then cometh the 
end." 

But this is the most superficial aspect of it. There 
is something deeper in man's desire to anticipate an end 
than this. Yery early in every experience there comes 
the sense of imperfection and failure in what we have 
already done, and the wish that it were possible to be- 
gin the game again. There is a curious phenomenon 
that often takes us by surprise as it comes just in the 
full freshness of the new human life : The young man 
of twenty in his newly undertaken work or in his col- 



Tlie Certain End. 



363 



lege-room breaks out in pessimistic railing at the misery 
and unsatisfactoriness of life. He sings great psalms 
of misery and disappointment. We laugh at that some- 
times, and call it foolish affectation. It seems to be a 
feeble effort to create or imagine an experience which 
does not exist. No doubt that element is in it, and 
that is worthy of our laughter; but something else is 
in it also. The cry of the boy of twenty that life is too 
long, that the end is far away, that there are weary 
years to travel before the end is reached, — that cry does 
not come from very deep down in the soul. The soul is 
really full of joy in life, of gladness in the abundant 
days and in the years of bounteous promise; but this 
cry, so far as it is real, means the beginning of satisfac- 
tion in the fact that there is an end. Already there are 
some things in life which the soul would fain get out of 
life. The first sketch has so marred the canvas that 
the perfect picture seems impossible. 

And as life goes on to more than twenty that convic- 
tion grows. The cry may not be uttered as it was at first. 
The habit of living gets to be so strong that men do not 
think so much about the end, but the expectation of it 
and the comfort of the expectation of it are still there. 
Tell any man that he, out of all these mortals, was never 
to die, that there was to be no end for him, and, what 
ever might be his first emotion, by and by must come 
something like dismay; for every man has gathered 
something which he must get rid of, something which 
he would not carry always, and so there is promise to 
him when it is prophesied, "Then cometh the end.' , 

But it is not only the sense of the evil element in 



364 



The Certain End. 



life that makes men think with satisfaction of the 
coming end. So far as life has been a success and 
developed its better power, the same satisfaction comes. 
It is a poor and pathetic and desperate thing for a 
traveller along a dreary and difficult road to look for- 
ward to where the road evidently takes a sharp turn 
into the mountains and say to himself, "Thank God, 
there is an end to this ! Thank God, the new road 
which I cannot see cannot be worse than this which I 
am travelling now ! " But for a man to say, " This 
road is glorious, but 1 am glad to see that it stops yon- 
der ; for no doubt beyond is something yet more glori- 
ous still," that is a fine impatience. The noblest 
human natures are built thus, with such a conscious- 
ness of their own capacity, with such a feeling of eter- 
nity, with such an assurance of the richness of living, 
that all the best which they enjoy and see and are, be- 
comes suggestive and prophetic. Perfectly satisfied 
with it for the present, the moment that you shut down 
the curtain on it and said, "That is all," the color 
would be gone, the exhilaration and splendor would 
have vanished. But let the life be filled with the spirit 
of the springtime. Let the voice in its heart always 
keep saying to it, "You are to go on filling yourself 
with vitality and joy, day after day, month after month, 
and then cometh the end, then cometh the end ; " and 
then it is not a cessation of life but fuller life which the 
heart expects. The end which comes to the promise of 
springtime shall be the luxuriance of summer ! 

And so in many tones, yet all of them tones of satis- 
faction, men desire the end. Sometimes it is pathetic, 



The Certain End. 



365 



sometimes it is triumphant, but, either way, it rejoices 
in this arrangement of life by which things do not move 
on in unbroken processes to their results, but there are 
always endings and beginnings. It is like a great com- 
pany of travellers coming together in sight of the rest- 
ing-place where they are to spend the night, and lifting 
up all together one great shout of joy. Their hearts 
have various feelings. Some are glad because their 
day's task is done, others are glad because of the new 
task which, standing on this summit of attainment, they 
can see opening out beyond them for to-morrow; but 
all are glad. The end to which they are coming meets 
their desire. 

But now, with all this full in our sight, turn to the 
other side and think of the dread with which men 
think of the coming of ends in life. There can be no 
doubt that such dread does come to men when those 
changes are prophesied which are always sure to be 
waiting in the distance. Indeed the general sense of 
the changefulness of things is what sends such a perva- 
sive sense of insecurity through all our ordinary living. 
Let that be taken away, let the dread of change be 
driven out from this half-conscious possession which it 
holds on all we do and think and say, and it would 
be as if a dull and threatening day had cleared up into 
sunshine. The birds would burst out into song, and 
every twig upon the trees would quiver into bud and 
blossom- 
Can we give any account of this dread which thus 
haunts the very feature of life which, as we have seen, 
wakens also the almost enthusiastic desire of men's 



366 



The Certain End. 



souls ? We can at least see what some of its elements 
are. 

The first of them is almost too dull and mechanical 
to give any account of itself, while, at the same time, it 
is very real. It is the sheer force of habit. It is the 
inertia of life. That this which is should cease to be 
is shocking and surprising. Let it continue. Let 
there be no disturbance. So the soul shrinks from 
change. So it shudders as, far away, it hears the mur- 
mur of the sea whose shores it must reach at last and 
end its journey and embark on something new. 

Even in that dread of inertia there is something 
which is good. It is good for the tree to love the soil 
in which it grows and to consent with difficulty to 
transplanting, and not to have a restless habit of skip- 
ping constantly from field to field. It is good that the 
burden of proof should be on the side of change. 

But there is something more than this mere force of 
habit. I think that very often one shrinks from the 
announcement of the coming end of the condition in 
which he is now living because, when he hears it, he 
becomes aware how far he is from having yet exhausted 
the condition in which he is now living. A boy has 
longed to be a man, but when he stands upon the brink 
of manhood and looks behind him over the yet-un- 
reaped acres of his youth, he is almost ready to go back 
and postpone his manhood till he has taken richer pos- 
session of those harvest-fields. The scholar-period of 
some man's life is over, and the working days are ready 
to begin. How many students have stood and gazed 
back over the calm days of books, and hated the thought 



The Certain End. 



367 



of going out and leaving all the stores of learning which 
were lying there unlearned. And so of the great end, 
— the mighty change. "Who wants to die so long as 
this great rich world has only had the very borders of 
its riches touched, so long as the fountains are spring- 
ing everywhere of the mere overflow of one or two of 
which only our lips have drunk ? This is no slight 
tie to life, no small element in the dread of death, — 
this sense of the unexhausted richness of the life we 
leave. 

But even more than this, perhaps, comes in the great 
uncertainty which envelops every experience which is 
untried. The great mystery of the unlived is a strong 
element in our dread of change. Your friend may 
tell you everything about it, but you cannot really 
know any experience till you have passed through it 
yourself. The passage from light into light must be 
always through a zone of darkness. How we are feeling 
this in these days in which we live ! Old social condi- 
tions are ceasing to be possible any longer. In their 
place new ones are evidently coming, which, when they 
shall have come, we know will be more just and happy 
and humane than those which we have known so long ; 
but who that feels this most deeply is not conscious of 
misgiving and of dread as he enters with his time into 
the cloud of disturbance that hovers between the old 
and the new ? Whenever a great public policy has ex- 
hausted itself and must be exchanged for a broader and 
a better, it is not mere blind conservatism, it is the 
true sense that in the untried ways must lie unguessed 
dangers that makes every wise man, however determined 



368 



The Certain End. 



he may be, pause in a momentary dread and hesitate a 
second — and, if he be a real servant of God, pray for 
new grace — before he cuts loose from the familiar 
shore, and sails out on to the untried seas. We dread 
the end even of that condition whose imperfectness we 
know by sad experience. This is a large part of the 
reason why the most miserable cling to life, counting 
it better — 

" to tear the ills they have 
Than flee to others which they know not of." 

Thus we recount our human lot, and see man stand- 
ing in desire and in dread, at once, of this perpetual 
change, this perpetual coming of the end of things. 
Blessed indeed it is for man, standing in such confused 
and mingled mood, that the end of things does not de- 
pend upon his choice, but comes by a will more large, 
more wise than his. If we ourselves had to give the 
signal when each experience would close; if the boy 
must say when he had been boy long enough, and 
summon the man's responsibilities to gather out of the 
vague world and rest upon him ; if our own hand must 
be put forth to disturb the settled peace, and waken 
confusion and perplexity ; if at last we must with our 
own linger give the sign that the time had come for the 
mortal to put on immortality, — how the desire and the 
dread would light within us! In large part we are 
spared all that. The workman's voice has not to sum- 
mon out of the east the shadows of the night in which 
no man can work. " It comes of itself, " we say. We 
mean, and when we speak with perfect reverence and 
truth, we say, "God sends it." 



The Certain End. 



369 



God sends it ! And when we do indeed say that, does 
there not come at once some sort of larger light into 
this mixed condition, this double attitude of man to- 
ward the changefulness of life of which we have been 
speaking ? That thing which man thus alternately, and 
sometimes even simultaneously, desires and dreads, if 
we consider it only with reference to man, is all con- 
fusion. We can make nothing of it. Who can say 
whether it be good or evil, blessing or curse, wisdom 
or blunder, — this perpetual hurrying of all things to 
their end ? But if around this instability of human life 
is wrapped the great permanence of the life of God ; if 
no end comes which is not in His sight truly a begin- 
ning; nay, if the whole element of time is so lost in 
His eternity that not the beginning and the ending of 
experiences but their spiritual relations to our growing 
characters is everything, — then is there not light upon 
it all ? To value everything which comes to me, and yet 
to know that not its form but its spiritual essence is 
really valuable, therefore to hasten while I have it to 
get out of it what it has to give me, and to even rejoice 
that some day in the loss of its formal presence I shall 
be able to make myself completely sure of the posses- 
sion of its spirit, — that is the true attitude of the soul 
toward every good thing that God gives, — health, friends 
wealth, learning, life. But that true attitude the soul 
cannot keep toward them all unless they all mean God, 
come by His gift, and are instinct with His spiritual 
intention. 

How many things there are of which we say, " I thank 
(tO(\ T may do this, but I thank God also that the time 

24 



370 



The Certain End. 



will come when I shall stop doing this and do it no 
longer. " The business in which we engage to earn our" 
bread, the slight associations and partnerships which 
we make for special purposes with our fellow-men, the 
journeys which we undertake, the schools in which we 
spend our years of study, the houses which we build to 
live in, — all these are of this sort. They are good and 
welcome because they are but for a while. Our mortal 
life, that too we are thankful for, but thankful also that 
it shall not last forever. But all this satisfaction in 
the temporariness comes only from its being enfolded 
and embraced within the eternity of the eternal. There 
must be something which does not pass away, something 
to which comes no end. The soul and its character, 
God and His love and glory, — it is because within 
these as the ends of life all other things are enfolded as 
the means of life, that we can be reconciled to, nay, 
even can rejoice in the knowledge that the means must 
cease when they shall have made their contribution to 
the end which must endure forever. 

But to know no everlasting end or purpose, to have 
nothing but the means to rest on, to see them slipping 
out of our grasp and leaving nothing permanent behind, 
— that is terrible! 

How is it with you, oh, my friend ? There comes an 
end to all these things which you are doing now ! Not 
because God snatches them out of your hands, but be- 
cause they exhaust themselves and expire, because they 
are by their nature temporary and perishing, they die. 
You follow out any of them a little way and you come 
to this inevitable epitaph of their mortality, "Then 



The Certain End. 



371 



cometh the end. " How is it then with you ? Have you 
anything which is not perishable ? Have you anything 
to which there comes no end ? " What ? " you say ; 
" what sort of thing ? " And I reply, " Any passion for 
character and love of God ! " Those are eternal. There 
comes no end to those. You may change your dress, 
your name, your habits, your companionships, your 
work, — everything that you do, — but your passion for 
character and love for God, if you have them, you never 
change; they are the same forever. New temptations 
spring out of new soil, and the old hatred of sin leaps 
on its feet to fight them. New chances of goodness 
start up in some completely novel life, and the old eager- 
ness for goodness cries out and claims them for its own. 
There is no end to the great ends of life. If one is 
living in the resolute pursuit of them, he may first 
welcome, and then rejoice to leave behind the several 
means which in succession come to offer him their help 
toward the attainment of those ends, as the traveller 
whose heart is set upon some distant city rejoices when 
he comes to, and then rejoices when he gets beyond, 
each field and river which must be crossed before he 
enters the far-off city-gates. 

A noble independence this gives to a man's soul. 
Poverty comes up and joins you, and you say, " Welcome, 
Poverty. We will walk together for a while, and when 
I have done with you, when you have done for me all 
that you can, then you shall go. I will dismiss you 
with my thanks. " Riches comes rolling up to be your 
fellow-traveller, and you say, " Welcome, Riches. There 
will come an end to you; but while you last we will 



372 



The Certain End. 



be friends, and you shall help me." Men praise you 
and you accept their praise as, when you are sailing 
in a ship, you accept a wind which will not last for- 
ever, but which while it lasts may fill your sails and 
speed you on your way. Men blame you, and you take 
their blame and bid it make you humble that you may 
be more strong, because more trustful of a greater than 
yourself when the sunshine comes again. The more 
your soul is set upon the ends of life, the more you use 
its means in independence. You use them as a work- 
man uses his tools, taking them up in quick succession, 
casting them down one after the other, never falling in 
love with the tool because the work possesses him. 

To-day, upon Palm Sunday, Jesus comes riding into 
J erusalem in the midst of palm-branches and hosannas. 
Next Thursday, He is prostrate in Gethsemane. Next 
Friday, He is hanging on the Cross. Next Sunday, He 
is rising from the tomb. The great experiences come 
quick on one another. Joy crowds on sorrow, sorrow 
presses on the steps of joy. To each comes the quick 
end. Each is but born before it dies. But one thing 
never dies, — the service of His Father, the salvation of 
the world, the sum and substance of His life ! Set upon 
that, with His soul full of that, joy comes and pain 
comes, and both are welcomed and dismissed with thank- 
fulness because their coming and their going bring the 
end for which He lives more near. 

Such be our lives ! As J esus was, so may we be, 
seeking an end so great, so constant, so eternal that 
every change may come to us and be our minister and 
not our conqueror ; that even our cross may come as His 



The Certain End. 



373 



came, and men may gather round it and say, "Alas, 
then this is all ! Alas, that finally it should all come 
to this ! " While we who hang upon the cross cry, " It is 
finished, " with a shout of triumph, counting the finish- 
ing but a new beginning, and looking out beyond the 
3ross to richer growth in character, and braver and more 
fruitful service of our Lord ! 



THE END. 



42. 

Xq C 
23 



